THE XINOTECH TRANSLATION ENVIRONMENT FROM OTHER LANGUAGES INTO ADA

XINOTECH HAS RESEARCHED AND DEVELOPED A LANGUAGE-BASED, LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT, FORMALLY-GENERATED INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT. THIS TECHNOLOGY IS COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE FOR ADA, CMS-2 AND OTHER LANGUAGES. DURING THE PHASE II OF SBIR N89-149, XINOTECH DEVELOPED AN INTEGRATED LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT ENVIRONMENT FOR REVERSE ENGINEERING, USING ATTRIBUTE GRAMMARS FOR SEMANTIC SPECIFICATION. THE TOOLS LAYER INCLUDES PROTOTYPES FOR A SOURCE TO SOURCE TRANSLATOR XLT, A GRAPH ABSTRACTOR XGA, AND A GUIDELINE, STANDARDS AND METRICS ANALYZER XG&M; ALL FOUR INDEPENDENT OF SOURCE AND DESTINATION LANGUAGES. THE LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT ARCHITECTURE IS SUPPORTED THROUGH XML, THE XINOTECH META-LANGUAGE. IT IS PROPOSED THAT FOR DARPA91-208 THE TRANSLATOR BE ENHANCED WITH A PATTERN ABSTRACTOR TO REDUCE SOURCE CODE PATTERNS INTO HIGH-LEVEL ADA STRUCTURES, SO USEFUL TO TRANSLATE OPERATING SYSTEM MULTI-TASKING DEPENDENCIES. ABSTRACTION PATTERNS WILL BE SPECIFIED USING XPAL, A SUBLANGUAGE OF XML. AS PART OF DARPA91-208, XLT (AND THE REST OF THE REVERSE-ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT) WILL BE INSTANTIATED FOR CMS-2 TO ADA, JOVIAL TO ADA AND FORTRAN TO ADA. SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPMENT OF THIS ENVIRONMENT WILL PRODUCE A FORMALLY-SPECIFIED, FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE, RETARGETABLE TRANSLATOR, SO APPLICABLE TO CUSTOMIZE DIALECT AND OPERATING SYSTEM DEPENDENCIES. IT WILL BE FUNCTIONALLY INTEGRATED INTO XINOTECH'S POWERFUL FORWARDAND REVERSE-ENGINEERING INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENT. THIS ENVIRONMENT WILL MAKE POSSIBLE THE TRANSLATION TO ADA OF EXPENSIVE EXISTING SOFTWARE, AT A FRACTION OF THE COST. IT WILL ENHANCE THE REUSE AND SEE CAPABILITIES OF THE STARS PROGRAM. AT LITTLE EXTRA COST, THE TRANSLATOR CAN BE INSTANTIATED FOR OTHER MEMBERS OF THE CMS-2, JOVIAL AND FORTRAN FAMILIES, PASCAL, C, COBOL AND OTHERS TO ADA.