Automation of upgrade process for enterprise resource planning systems

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for semi-automatic process of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system upgrade. We suggest to change currently accepted practice of manual upgrade process when domain expert-programmer works through all localizations and transforms them manually to the new version of ERP system. The core idea for this framework is to induce the software code transformation patterns from completed upgrade projects and then to refine these patterns by using knowledge of ERP upgrade expert. These patterns lets us to increase productivity of upgrade process by improving automatic code alignment and annotation and by providing code transformation to the new version of ERP system. The price for these improvements is a requirement for upgrade expert to move from traditional 4/GL ERP programming language to stochastic meta-programming language which is used to describe code alignment and code transformation patterns.