Source code investigation is one of the most time-consuming activities during software maintenance and evolution, yet currently-available tool support suffers from several shortcomings. Browsing is typically limited to low-level elements, investigation is only supported as a one-way activity, and tools provide little help in getting an encompassing picture of the system under examination. In our research, we have developed tool support for design navigation that addresses these shortcomings. A design browser allows for flexible browsing of a system's design-level representation and for information exchange with a suite of program comprehension tools. The browser is complemented with a retriever supporting full-text and structural searching. In this paper, we detail these tools and their integration into a reverse engineering environment, present three case studies and put them into perspective.

Article Free Access Share on Pattern-based reverse-engineering of design components Authors: Rudolf K. Keller Département IRO, Université de Montéal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 357, Canada Département IRO, Université de Montéal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 357, CanadaView Profile , Reinhard Schauer Département IRO, Université de Montéal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 357, Canada Département IRO, Université de Montéal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 357, CanadaView Profile , Sébastien Robitaille Département IRO, Université de Montéal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 357, Canada Département IRO, Université de Montéal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 357, CanadaView Profile , Patrick Pagé Département IRO, Université de Montéal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 357, Canada Département IRO, Université de Montéal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 357, CanadaView Profile Authors Info & Claims ICSE '99: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on Software engineeringMay 1999 Pages 226–235https://doi.org/10.1145/302405.302622Published:16 May 1999Publication History 139citation2,382DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations139Total Downloads2,382Last 12 Months197Last 6 weeks65 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

The success of an object-oriented software development project highly depends on how well the designers can capture the Hot Spots of the application domain, that is, those aspects that should be kept flexible to accommodate reuse and change. Yet, all too often, Hot Spots are hardly documented and over years of software evolution, the source code that reifies them becomes increasingly entangled with the application specific code. This blurring of the flexible with the rigid parts makes an application hard to maintain, prone to unexpected change impact, and immobile for reuse in related areas. In this paper we apply SPOOL, our prototype environment for reverse engineering, to the recovery of Hot Spots in C++ software. We base the technique for Hot Spot recovery on the design concept of template methods. We present the approach and the interactive analysis capabilities of SPOOL to visualize browse, and inspect Hot Spots in both separate and contextual form. The findings are validated based on two industrial systems.