Frequently Asked Questions

This information covers the basic questions we have been asked about our automatic software migration solutions and more. For more details regarding our specific products and services, please review the corresponding sections.

Who is ArtinSoft and what does it offer?

ArtinSoft, short for Artificial Intelligence Software, is a leading software migration specialist. Founded in 1993, the company’s pioneering automatic migration solutions enable enterprises worldwide to move their legacy systems and databases to modern, scalable platforms such as Java and .NET.
Based on artificial intelligence, ArtinSoft's proven cost-effective, rapid and secure technology has successfully migrated diverse applications ranging from 5,000 to 1,500,000 lines of code in a wide range of business and government entities.

What do you mean by a legacy system?

Any monolithic information system that is too difficult and expensive to modify to meet new and constantly changing business requirements.

Why would I want to migrate?

Simply because your information systems have been built with the aim of facilitating your business progress. Nevertheless, you have noticed that these applications, critical to your business processes, can no longer keep up with the latest technologies as they have been developed on legacy systems and/or languages.

The knowledge capital they contain makes these applications the backbone of your business, a very valuable asset, but they have become increasingly costly and difficult to maintain. Worst of all, within their current technological framework, it is highly impossible to fully adapt them to your modern day needs.

Licensing fees, lack of enough qualified support, rigid development environments, lack of integration with other applications, inaccessibility and inability to work on the Web makes them a suffocating bottleneck for your business development.
ArtinSoft’s one-of-a-kind technology, however, automatically migrates them to an advanced environment of your choice where you can derive further benefits from your investment and constantly evolve your systems with the latest technologies

What do you mean by automatic software migration?

Basically, instead of manually rewriting each line of code or adding temporary or piece-meal solutions, ArtinSoft’s technology carries out the whole process with minimal human intervention by breaking up a legacy system’s business knowledge into components accessible through modern industry-standard protocols. Our approach is proven to produce functionally equivalent systems in more than 1/10 of the time and less than 5% of the cost of rewriting the original application.

The alternative rewriting from scratch is fully capable of creating a system that performs identically to the original system. However, it can be far too time consuming, very costly and may involve a high risk of failure.

Can you define functional equivalence?

This term basically means that your converted application’s functionality is identical to your original application. This eases your transition to a far more modern development environment as you are now empowered to add new features to your application with minor training.

How does your technology work through the migration process?

Through its pioneering automatic software migration technology, Freedom®, ArtinSoft employs grammar-based reasoning to optimize mission critical applications’ migration process. At the core of Freedom® there is a proprietary Artificial Intelligence technology that creates a full abstraction of the original program via intermediate representations in which millions of transformations are applied to produce another abstraction in the target language. The new source code is then generated from that abstraction. At each processing stage, the system cleans-up the logic, derives useful information from it, deduces its new best representational form and passes it on to the next stage.

Does automatic mean instant software migration?

Actually, the answer is quite simple. Do not confuse automatic with “instant” processes such as making coffee: a simple process as it may be, it does not produce the same taste or flavor as real coffee, anyhow! Automatic migration speeds up the whole process producing outstanding results that require minimal human intervention for fine-tuning the final product.

Can functional equivalence be achieved automatically?

ArtinSoft’s technology has proven to automatically migrate more than 95% of the source code to your preferred target language. The reason why functional equivalence falls short of reaching 100% at the automatic migration stage is due to the following two factors: first of all, the paradigm shift between the two languages, and the dependency of the applications developed in one language on the platform where they are executed.

The second reason has to do with the knowledge or work that has to be developed or provided by human beings. A clear example of this occurs at the stage where the system is tested. These tests cannot be carried automatically without any user intervention. The users are the only ones who know how the system behaves and what the results that the system produces should be like.

Are there any alternatives to automatic software migration?

Yes, depending on what exactly you need to achieve, you can choose among: screen scrapers, legacy wrapping, packaged software and rewriting from scratch.

Can you comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the above options?

For a thorough discussion on this subject, please refer to the following article:

What are the key stages of a typical software migration process?

  • Complete Evaluation of the Project: ArtinSoft carefully analyzes the entire system in the source language. Once this evaluation phase is over, ArtinSoft will provide you with a bid on the basis of total number of code lines and the overall complexity of the migration project. This is what we call a “Ready” program.
  • Code Migration: ArtinSoft converts your source application to a leading-edge technological environment of your choice such as Java or .NET.
  • Testing: The application in Java or .NET will undergo a series of tests to ensure it is functionally equivalent to the original application. It is important to have a series of test cases for this migration stage.
  • Debugging/Coding. Any problem found during the testing stage is corrected here.
  • Finished migration: You will be delivered a revamped application equivalent to your original application, but with the possibility of taking advantage of all the features the new development environment provides.
  • Enhanced application / new functionalities: You can now take advantage of the power of the new programming language and third-party tools and libraries to add functionalities to your new migrated application.

How long does a software migration take and how much does it cost?

ArtinSoft has developed tools and a methodology to analyze the scope and the complexity of your migration project. The information they gather enables us to provide you with an efficient cost and time estimate of your project (if you want us to perform the whole migration for you) and a detailed migration plan. This is what we call a “Ready” program.

Can you provide any references?

Yes, gladly. We have successfully migrated millions of code lines all over the world. For a quick reference, you can go to our Case Studies section, or contact us for more information.