Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. About the Rule Development Guide
This guide is intended for software engineers who want to create custom YAML-based rules for Migration Toolkit for Applications (MTA) tools.
See the Introduction to the Migration Toolkit for Applications for an overview and the CLI Guide for details.
1.1.1. Use of <MTA_HOME> in this guide
This guide uses the <MTA_HOME> replaceable variable to denote the path to your MTA installation.
The mta-7.1.1-cli<OS>.zip* extracts a single binary called mta-cli.
When you encounter <MTA_HOME> in this guide, replace it with the actual path to your MTA installation.
1.2. The MTA rules
The Migration Toolkit for Applications (MTA) contains rule-based migration tools (analyzers) that you can use to analyze the application user interfaces (APIs), technologies, and architectures used by the applications you plan to migrate. MTA analyzer rules use the following rule pattern:
when(condition) message(message) tag(tags)
You can use the MTA rules internally to perform the following tasks:
- Extract files from archives.
- Decompile files.
- Scan and classify file types.
- Analyze XML and other file content.
- Analyze the application code.
- Build the reports.
MTA builds a data model based on the rule execution results and stores component data and relationships in a graph database. This database can then be queried and updated as required by the migration rules and for reporting purposes.
You can create your own custom analyzer rules. You can use custom rules to identify the use of custom libraries or other components that might not be covered by the provided standard migration rules.
