The verifiability principle of meaning holds that information is meaningful only if there is a procedure that can verify whether it is true or false. In this paper, we explore this principle of philosophy in the realm of program comprehension. We introduce the notion of concept programs, which are independent, executable, and thus verifiable units of program knowledge. Concept programs are well-suited for the comprehension and explanation of the central mechanisms that underlie a complex program. We use an industrial case study to motivate the importance of concept programs for the comprehension of the innermost complexity of industrial programs.

Object-oriented programming is about the creation of reusable classes that are to be extended to capture the specific requirements of the application at hand. However, instead of extending the methods of these classes, programmers often introduce subclasses in which they replace these methods with implementations that are completely detached from the superclass; that is, the subclass method does not invoke, directly or indirectly, its counterpart in the superclass. In this paper we apply the SPOOL environment to the reverse-engineered C++ source code of two industrial systems to investigate the occurrences and causes for method replacements, both at the method and at the class level. We define the method replacement indicator (MRI), which quantifies the extent of method replacements. Based on the data obtained in the analysis, we identify and discuss the causes why programmers replace non-primitive method implementations of reusable classes.

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.

Component-based software development has proven effective for systems implementation in well-understood application domains, but is still insufficient for the creation of reusable and changeable software architectures. Design patterns address these shortcomings by capturing the expertise that is necessary for reusable design solutions. However, there is so far no methodical approach to providing these conceptual design building blocks in a tangible and composable form. To address this limitation, we introduce the notion of design components, reified design patterns fit for software composition. In this paper, we define design components and explain their constituents and services. Furthermore, we detail the activities of design composition and illustrate them as a process within a four-dimensional design space. Moreover, we describe a prototype of a design composition environment. A case study helps illustrating our approach.