System for generating an application framework and components

The present invention is a system or tool that migrates a legacy application that has data access elements, user interface elements, and control logic. The system parses source code of a legacy application to identify data access components of the application, where the data access components comprise queries, tables, and columns. The system further parses the source code of the legacy application to identify user interface components of the application, where the user interface components comprise buttons, text boxes, and layout information describing their appearance and layout in the legacy application. The system forms an abstract representation of the data access and user interface components, and creates a new application shell having data access components and user interface components based on their abstract representation, where the new application shell is in a language different than the legacy application. The new application shell may then be manually augmented with control logic corresponding to control logic of the legacy application.