The authors describe a novel approach to software re-engineering that combines several technologies: object-oriented databases integrated with parser, for capturing the software to be re-engineered; specification and pattern languages for querying and analyzing a database of software; and transformation rules for automatically generating re-engineered code. The authors then describe REFINE, an environment for program representation, analysis, and transformation that provides the tools needed to implement the automation of software maintenance and re-engineering. The transformational approach is illustrated with examples taken from actual experience in re-engineering software in C, JCL and NATURAL. It is concluded that the ability to support automation in modifying large software systems by using rule-based program transformation is a key innovation of the present approach that distinguishes it from tools that focus only on automation of program analysis.>

We present a summary of the CHI project conducted at Kestrel Institute through mid-1984. The objective of this project was to perform research on knowledge-based software environments. Toward this end, key portions of a prototype environment, called CHI, were built that established the feasibility of this approach. One result of this research was the development of a wide-spectrum language that could be used to express all stages of the program development process in the system. Another result was that the prototype compiler was used to synthesize itself from very-high-level description of itself. In this way the system was bootstrapped. We describe the overall nature of the work done on this project, give highlights of implemented prototypes, and describe the implications that this work suggests for the future of software engineering. In addition to this historical perspective, current research projects at Kestrel Institute as well as commercial applications of the technology at Reasoning Systems are briefly surveyed.