THE XINOTECH FORMAL SPECIFICATION OF OBJECT ABSTRACTION TOOLS FOR ADA RE-ENGINEERING

XINOTECH HAS RESEARCHED AND DEVELOPED TECHNOLOGY FOR A LANGUAGE-BASED, LANGUAGEINDEPENDENT, FORMALLY-GENERATED, ATTRIBUTE GRAMMAR-BASED, INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT, COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE FOR ADA, CMS-2 AND OTHER LANGUAGES. THE OBJECTIVE OF THE PROPOSED RESEARCH IS TO USE THIS TECHNOLOGY TO BUILD A LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT, SEMANTIC-BASED, FORMALLY-SPECIFIED ENVIRONMENT FOR REVERSE ENGINEERING, INTEGRATED FOR FORWARD ENGINEERING, INSTANTIATED FOR ADA. THE TOOLS LAYER WILL INCLUDE XOA, THE OBJECT ABSTRACTOR, AND XCA, THE CONTROL ABSTRACTOR FOR DESIGN RECOVERY. XOA WILL BE SUPPORTED BY XOI, THE OBJECT IDENTIFIER, FOR THE AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION OF OBJECTS IN EXISTING ADA CODE, AND XOC, THE OBJECT CONSTRUCTOR, FOR THE AUTOMATIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE ADA CODE TO REFLECT THE NEWLY IDENTIFIED OBJECTS. XOA WILL MAKE USE OF USER-DEFINABLE OBJECTORIENTED SPECIFICATION LANGUAGES OOSLS TO CAPTURE THE ABSTRACTED DESIGNS AND TO FORMALIZE THE OTHERWISE IMPLICIT OBJECT RELATIONSHIPS IN THE ADA CODE. THESE TOOLS WILL COMPLEMENT OTHER XINOTECH TOOLS (XG&M, THE GUIDELINES, STANDARDS AND METRICS ANALYZER, AND XLT, THE LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR). THESE TOOLS WILL BE BUILT ON TOP OF THE LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT ARCHITECTURE SUPPORTED BY XML, THE XINOTECH META-LANGUAGE, AND XPAL, WHICH IS XML'S SUBLANGUAGE FOR SPECIFYING THE PATTERN ABSTRACTION MAPPINGS THAT WILL DEFINE THE OBJECT CONSTRUCTION PROCESS IN XOC. THESE TOOLS WILL BE OPEN SYSTEMS WITH IMMEDIATE COMMERCIAL AVAILABILITY. SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPMENT OF THIS ENVIRONMENT WILL PRODUCE A CUSTOMIZABLE, EXTENDIBLE, FORMALLY-SPECIFIED, INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENT FOR AUTOMATED RE-ENGINEERING AND MAINTENANCE OF ADA. IT WILL ENHANCE THE REUSE AND SEE CAPABILITIES OF THE STARS PROGRAM. AUTOMATICALLY OBJECT-ORIENTING ADA CODE WILL INCREASE THE REUSABILITY OF ADA CODE, AT MINIMAL COST, OTHERWISE THE DOLLAR COST AND COMPLEXITY OF MANUAL REORGANIZATION MAY RENDER THE ADA CODE NOT REUSABLE, LEAVING STARTING FROM SCRATCH AS THE ONLY OPTION. THIS SYSTEM WILL HAVE WIDE APPLICATION IN A MULTITUDE OF OTHER LANGUAGES AT LITTLE EXTRA COST.