DOI: 10.4018/IJISSS.2016040108 Copyright © 2016, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. International Journal of Information Systems in the Service Sector Volume 8 • Issue 2 • April-June 2016 ADM-Based Migration from JAVA Swing to RIA Applications Samir Mbarki, Department of Computer Science, Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco Naziha Laaz, Department of Computer Science, Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco Sara Gotti, Department of Computer Science, Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco Zineb Gotti, Department of Computer Science, Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco ABSTRACT Companies are investing a lot of resources and effort for migrating their legacy applications and adapting them with the rapid technological changes. For this reason, the authors are interested in the modernization of desktop applications developed in Java Swing to Web 2.0 applications. Therefore, an ADM approach is applied in order to develop a tool named FlexMigration allowing automatic reverse engineering of Swing GUI to obtain a RIA GUI. The usefulness of this tool is the automation of the migration process with the extraction of the actions encapsulated in possible anonymous classes. As an illustration, they present along this paper a reengineering of a small legacy chat application. The authors explain its migration process to generate a similar Flex Graphical User Interface. KeywoRDS Abstract Syntax Tree Meta-Model (ASTM), Anonymous Inner Class, Architecture-Driven Modernization (ADM), Graphical User Interface Meta-Model (GUIM), Java Development Tool (JDT), Knowledge Discovery Model (KDM), Model Driven Engineering (MDE), Reverse Engineering, Rich Internet Application (RIA) 1. INTRoDUCTIoN In recent years, the importance of intangibles in the process of value creation has emerged with ever greater emphasis. Intangibles, as a resource without physical substance, are a key driver underpinning business competitiveness Since 1950, software systems have become an absolute necessity for companies. During each decade, new technologies appear according to different paradigms. Hence, many programming approaches have been established (e.g. functional languages, procedural languages, 4G languages, object languages, etc.). Furthermore, modeling languages were subject to the same evolution as programing languages. They have become more powerful in expressing requirements at a high abstraction level. No one denies that software engineering focusing on models is the future. Consequently, it is essential to learn good modeling practices to capitalize on the advantages of the models fully in order to track changes in technology and evolve to better software development practices using MDE. The Object Management Group introduced the MDA approach in 2000 (Blanc, 2004). The ADM was defined later, in 2007 (http://adm.omg.org). The main goal of the ADM is to provide standards in the field of reverse engineering. These standards are based on models and meta- models for modernizing legacy software systems. To meet the modernization requirements, the ADM defines two main meta-models: the ASTM and the Knowledge KDM (http://www.omgwiki.org/admtf). 98