"what is the difference between restructuring and forward engineering?"
So I decided to dedicate this article in order to highlight the difference between the two terms and also what they actually mean.
Restructuring can be defined as follows:
"Restructuring is the transformation from one representation form to another at the same relative abstraction level, while preserving the subject system's external behavior (functionality and semantics)."
Therefore, restructuring is something that you do while remaining at the same phase of software engineering life cycle. It's example can be the Normalization of the database at the design phase, i.e. taking the database design from 1st Normal Form to 2nd Normal Form to 3rd Normal Form and then from there to BNF (if necessary). So this is what you are doing while remaining at the same phase of Software Engineering, i.e. the Design phase. You have transformed a crude design into a more structured design. You are just restructuring the information that you have during the design phase, in another form that is more structured, clearer and less ambiguous. So you are achieving some benefit with the help of restructuring. Similarly, during the Implementation phase, if you are replacing your "bubble sort" algorithm with a "quick sort" algorithm in order to enhance the performance of the system, then this is also called restructuring but at a different level of abstraction.
At the other hand, Forward engineering is what you call the normal execution of the software life cycle in the normal, i.e. forward direction. It is given this name in order to represent "Reverse Engineering" (refer to my article titled "Reverse Engineering" dated March 7, 1998) something that is executed by reversing the normal software engineering procedure, which is from Requirements to design to implementation to testing to delivering to maintenance. So in this regard, these two terms are quite different in meaning and interpretation.
For further details on Restructuring, and the terminology used in its definition, you can refer to my article titled "Restructuring" published on March 14, 1998.
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