A Visual System Supporting Software Reuse in the Banking Legacy System Context

Banking legacy systems intensively exchange messages in electronic format. Such systems are, for their nature, difficult to update and maintain. As a consequence, the introduction of new types of messages is a hard task. Adding new functionalities requires custom coding and software reuse is seen as a key to obtain a better time-to-market factor, risk and cost reduction. In this paper we describe the architecture arid part of the implementation of the SI.RE. Visual System, an Interbanking Network Information System that lets us generate gateways for the exchange of electronic messages among banking legacy systems and supports software reuse. In particular, the SI.RE visual system contains a Visual Programming Environment that allows us to obtain a rapid development of the message handling functions. This environment implements a Visual Programming Language UVG that allows a programmer to reuse COBOL routines.