C2G. Towards automation of CUI to GUI migration

The migration of character-based, form-oriented mainframe user interfaces (CUIs) to graphical user inter- faces (GUIs) is an appropriate first step to move legacy systems towards client/server computing. The main tasks involved in this migration are the acquisition of information about the CUI dialogs, the analysis of this information, and the actual mapping of the CUI dialogs onto GUI dialogs. A distinction can be made between different levels of mapping complexity ranging from the congruent migration of single dialog elements (CUI fields) to the complete redesigning of dialogs. Existing tools provide insufficient support for the migration tasks, in particular for the acquisition and analysis of information. We present the concept of the tool environment C2G which supports the entire migration process and allows at least partial automation of tasks. C2G consists of individual tools which communicate by means of a common repository. Re repository stores the information created during t he acquisition, analysis, and mapping of tasks. C2G is an open workbench which can be extended successively to support more complex migration tasks.