A LANGUAGE - INDEPENDENT DESIGN ABSTRACTOR AND TREE BASED CONVERTER FOR A PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT

XIONTECH HAS RESEARCHED AND DEVELOPED TECHNOLOGY FOR LANGUAGE-BASED, LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT, GRAMMAR-GENERATED INTERACTIVE PROGRAM COMPOSITION. THIS TECHNOLOGY IS 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 SYSTEM FOR REVERSE ENGINEERING. IT WILL INCLUDE AN EMBEDDED DESIGN LANGUAGE XDL, A DESIGN ABSTRACTOR XDA, AND A TREE-BASED CONVERTER XTC. XDA AND XTC WILL BE INDEPENDENT OF SOURCE AND DESTINATION LANGUAGES. XDA DESTINATIONS WILL BE PDL'S (INCLUDING XDL) AND EXISTING GRAPHICAL DESIGN TOOLS. THESE TOOLS WILL BE BUILT ON A LAYER OF REVERSE ENGINEERING FUNCTIONS SUCH AS CONNECTIVITY, DATA-FLOW AND CONTROLFLOW ANALYZERS, WHICH MAY BE USED TO IMPLEMENT MAINTENANCE TOOLS SUCH AS RIPPLE-EFFECT DETECTORS AND PROGRAM SLICERS. THE REVERSE FUNCTIONAL LAYER WILL BE IMPLEMENTED ON TOP OF THE LANGUAGEINDEPENDENT ARCHITECTURE, ENHANCED BY A NOTATION FOR THE FORMAL SPECIFICATION OF SEMANTICS NEEDED TO SPECIFY SCOPING, NAME RESOLUTION, DBMS ACCESS, DATA AND CONTROL FLOW, AND MULTIPASS ATTRIBUTE EVALUATION TO FACILITATE CONVERSION. THIS WILL BE IMPLEMENTED FIRST FOR CMS-2, ADA AND CMS-2 TO ADA CONVERSION.