Transforming a Java application in an equivalent web-services based application: Toward a tool supported stepwise approach

Migration of legacy applications toward service-oriented systems is a hard task complicated by the lack of appropriate approaches and tools able to drive step by step a developer in the process. In this paper, an operational tools-based stepwise approach is proposed to transform Java applications in equivalent Web-service based applications. In each migration step a functionality of the target application is migrated in a Web service and the migration process stops when all the functionalities, one after the other, are migrated. Java tools and details on how to face practical problems involved in the migration task (e.g., wrapping, deployment and testing) are also presented. We conducted a case study in which the approach has been applied to a simple Java application. The case study indicates the applicability of the proposed approach and explains encountered problems and adopted solution. © 2008 IEEE.