Introduction to Software Engineering/Reengineering

The reengineering of software was described by Chikofsky and Cross in their 1990 paper, as "The examination and alteration of a system to reconstitute it in a new form". Less formally, reengineering is the modification of a software system that takes place after it has been reverse engineered, generally to add new functionality, or to correct errors.

This entire process is often erroneously referred to as reverse engineering; however, it is more accurate to say that reverse engineering is the initial examination of the system, and reengineering is the subsequent modification.

Re-engineering is mostly used in the context where a legacy system is involved. Software systems are evolving on high rate because there more research to make the better so therefore software system in most cases, legacy software needs to operate on a new computing platform. 'Re-engineering' is a set of activities that are carried out to re-structure a legacy system to a new system with better functionalities and conform to the hardware and software quality constraint.