Symbolic Analysis as a Basis for Program Comprehension: Symbolic analysis introduces symbols as atomistic hybrid objects to be used for program comprehension - Softcover

Laitila, Erkki

Softcover

ISBN 10: 363916833X ISBN 13: 9783639168334

Publisher: VDM Verlag, 2009

Synopsis

Research on program comprehension is important, because the amount of source code in mission-critical applications is increasing world-wide. As a solution for that challenge, a methodology with four stages is introduced. The first stage, GrammarWare, transforms the program into a symbolic form to function as a construction for the model, as the second stage, ModelWare. For the model the idea of an "atom" is presented to combine the benefits of objects for abstracting, and expressiveness of Prolog for tailoring and formalizing the model. The third stage, SimulationWare, implements a symbolic abstract machine, comparable with traditional Turing machine. With its computation model it enables symbolic analysis, which is comparable with dynamic analysis, but has a rather flexible pragmatics. The last stage, KnowledgeWare, is aimed for collecting knowledge for code inspection, error detection and verification of current operations. The methodology is programmed with Visual Prolog and implemented in a tool, which enables the handling of Java code. The practical goal for the methodology is intelligent support for maintenance tasks.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Erkki Laitila has a long experience as a computer engineer from many companies like Nokia. Since 1999 he has concentrated in reverse engineering using hybrid programming technology to connect object-oriented paradigm and logic for expressing semantics of formal languages as symbols. Symbolic analysis has much potential to be commercialized, too.

Edition details

• Publisher: VDM Verlag
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 363916833X
• ISBN 13: 9783639168334
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300