Improving reverse-engineering through the use of multiple knowledge sources

With the growing awareness of the importance of software maintenance has come a re-evaluation of software maintenance tools. Such tools range from source code analysers to semi-intelligent tools which seek to reconstruct system designs and specification documents from source code. However, it is clear that relying solely upon source code as a basis for reverse engineering has many problems. These problems include poor abstraction which leads to over detailed specification models and the inability to link other parts of a software system, such as documentation and user expertise, to the underlying code. This paper describes the work of the Esprit DOCKET project which has developed a prototype environment to support the development of a system model linking user-oriented, business aspects of a system, to operational code using a variety of knowledge source inputs: code, documents and user expertise. The aim is to provide a coherent model to form the basis for system understanding and to support the software change and evolution process. 1 Address: CRIAI, Piazzale Enrico Fermi, 80055 Portici, Naples, Italy.