A practical program transformation system for reverse engineering

Author

Ward, M.P. ; Bennett, K.H.

Author_Institution

Sci. Labs., Durham Univ., UK

fYear

1993

fDate

21-23 May 1993

Firstpage

212

Lastpage

221

Abstract

Program transformation systems provide one means of formally deriving a program from its specification. A tool called ReForm is described. It is designed to address the inverse problem to support the extraction of a specification from existing program code, using transformations. This is an important activity during software maintenance. One of the problems of transformation systems is the scarcity of practical tools which can address industrial scale problems, rather than contrived laboratory problems. An analysis of the important software engineering factors that contribute to a successful transformation based tool is provided. Results from using the tool are also presented

Keywords

formal specification; program diagnostics; software maintenance; software tools; ReForm; inverse problem; program code; program transformation system; reverse engineering; software engineering; software maintenance; specification; Assembly systems; Computer science; Formal specifications; Inverse problems; Laboratories; Logic programming; Reverse engineering; Software engineering; Software maintenance; Software tools;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Reverse Engineering, 1993., Proceedings of Working Conference on

Conference_Location

Baltimore, MD

Print_ISBN

0-8186-3780-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WCRE.1993.287763

Filename

287763