Program understanding-does it offer hope for aging software?

Author

Miller, Lee Dee ; Johnson, Luke ; Ning, J.Q. ; Devanbu, Premkumar

Author_Institution

Aerospace Corp., Los Angeles, CA

fYear

1992

fDate

20-23 Sep 1992

Firstpage

238

Lastpage

242

Abstract

Two questions are examined: what does it mean to understand a program? What solutions to the aging software crisis does program understanding offer? One view is that the aging software problem is a form of support for program maintenance. Another view is that the problem of applying program understanding techniques to aging software is one of both extending the life of existing relics, and mining them for valuable components. Yet another view is that domain specific cliches are necessary in program understanding and that program understanding support for software is how programmers can come to understand a program through cooperative interaction with a knowledge base. The work focuses on the flexibility provided by natural language interaction

Keywords

human factors; knowledge based systems; natural language interfaces; programming; software maintenance; software reusability; aging software crisis; aging software problem; cooperative interaction; domain specific cliches; existing relics; knowledge base; natural language interaction; program maintenance; program understanding support; Aging; Automatic testing; Knowledge representation; Libraries; Programming profession; Reverse engineering; Software maintenance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Conference, 1992., Proceedings of the Seventh

Conference_Location

Mclean, VA

ISSN

1068-3062

Print_ISBN

0-8186-2880-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/KBSE.1992.252917

Filename

252917