A case study in refactoring a legacy component for reuse in a product line

This paper describes activities performed to systematically improve the design and implementation of an existing software component in order to reuse it in a software product line. The activities are embedded in the application of Fraunhofer´s PuLSE™-DSSA approach for defining the architecture of a new product line. The component under investigation is the so called image memory handler (IMH) which is used in Ricoh´s current products of office appliances such as copier machines, printers, and multi-functional peripherals. It is responsible for controlling memory usage and compressing and decompressing image data. Both the improvement of the component´s design and implementation are based on a systematic analysis and focused on increasing maintainability and reusability and hence suitability for use in a product line.