Deriving Event Logs from Legacy Software Systems

Abstract. The modernization of legacy software systems is one of the key challenges in software industry, which requires comprehensive system analysis. In this context, process mining has proven to be useful for understanding the (business) processes implemented by the legacy software system. However, process mining algorithms are highly dependent on both the quality and existence of suitable event logs. In many scenarios, existing software systems (e.g., legacy applications) do not leverage process engines capable of producing such high-quality event logs, which hampers the application of process mining algorithms. Deriving suitable event log data from legacy software systems, therefore, constitutes a relevant task that fosters data-driven analysis approaches, including process mining, data-based process documentation, and process-centric software migration. This paper presents an approach for deriving event logs from legacy software systems by combining knowledge from source code and corresponding database operations. The goal is to identify relevant business objects as well as to document user and software interactions with them in an event log suitable for process mining.