THE XINOTECH FORMAL SPECIFICATION OF THE OBJECT ABSTRACTOR FOR AUTOMATIC PROGRAM TRANSFORMATION

INVESTIGATORS ARE RESEARCHING AND DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGY FOR A LANGUAGE-BASED, LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT, FORMALLY-GENERATED, ATTRIBUTE GRAMMAR-BASED, INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT, COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE FOR ADA, CMS-2, MODULA-2, AND COBOL. THEY ARE DEVELOPING A KNOWLEDGE-BASED, METALANGUAGE-BASED OBJECT ABSTRACTOR FOR THE AUTOMATIC TRANSFORMATION OF ADA PROGRAMS. THIS OBJECT ABSTRACTOR (XOA) RECOGNIZES RELATIONSHIPS IN EXISTING, NON OBJECT-ORIENTED (OO) ADA, COBOL, AND C PROGRAMS, AND TRANSFORMS THESE PROGRAMS INTO A HIGHER-LEVEL, OBJECT-ORIENTED ADA 9X, C++, OR COBOL 95 ARCHITECTURE WITH REUSABLE COMPONENTS. BOTH KNOWLEDGE-EXTRACTION AND KNOWLEDGE-ABSTRACTION ARE METALANGUAGE-BASED, AND ARE THUS LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT. XOA CAN BE EASILY RETARGETTED TO OTHER PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES, APPLIED TO PORT EXISTING SOFTWARE TO NEW LIBRARIES AND PLATFORMS, OR TO CHANGE THE MEANING OF PROGRAMS. RESEARCHERS ARE USING THIS SYSTEM TO TRANSLATE EXISTING PROGRAMS FROM OTHER LANGUAGES INTO ADA. THESE TOOLS ARE BEING BUILT ON TOP OF THE LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT ARCHITECTURE SUPPORTED BY XML, THE XINOTECH METALANGUAGE, AND XPAL, THE XINOTECH PATTERN ABSTRACTION LANGUAGE, WHICH IS AN XML COMPONENT. THESE TOOLS ARE OPEN SYSTEMS WITH IMMEDIATE COMMERCIAL AVAILABILITY. THIS SYSTEM WOULD HAVE A PROFOUND IMPACT IN THE INTERACTIVE DEVELOPMENT OF SOFTWARE, AS WELL AS IN THE MODERNIZATION OF EXISTING, OBSOLETE SOURCE CODE.