Program understanding using program slivers-an experience report

Author

Gupta, A.

fYear

1997

fDate

1-3 Oct. 1997

Firstpage

66

Lastpage

71

Abstract

A large amount of legacy software is written in languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. Hard-copy and inline documentation for this software is often inadequate to perform maintenance or re-implementation. These tasks are further hampered by legacy structures and programming style such as the use of “goto”. This paper describes our experience using simple pattern matching tools to obtain “slivers” from legacy process information systems. These slivers provided information that assisted in recovering program design. These slivers also helped in identifying segments which could cause problems with two-digit year fields at the turn of the century

Keywords

COBOL; FORTRAN; data integrity; information systems; pattern matching; program control structures; reverse engineering; software maintenance; software reusability; software tools; system documentation; COBOL; FORTRAN; Year 2000 problem; goto; hard-copy documentation; inline documentation; legacy process information systems; legacy software; pattern matching tools; program design recovery; program slivers; program understanding; programming style; software maintenance; software re-implementation; two-digit year fields;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Software Maintenance, 1997. Proceedings., International Conference on

Conference_Location

Bari, Italy

ISSN

1063-6773

Print_ISBN

0-8186-8013-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSM.1997.624232

Filename

5726936