Documenting software systems using types

✍ Scribed by Arie van Deursen; Leon Moonen

• Book ID: 104091891
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 521 KB
• Volume: 60
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-6423
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scico.2005.10.006

✦ Synopsis

We show how hypertext-based program understanding tools can achieve new levels of abstraction by using inferred type information for cases where the subject software system is written in a weakly typed language. We propose TYPEEXPLORER, a tool for browsing COBOL legacy systems based on these types. The paper addresses (1) how types, an invented abstraction, can be presented meaningfully to software re-engineers; (2) the implementation techniques used to construct TYPEEXPLORER; and

(3) the use of TYPEEXPLORER for understanding legacy systems, at the level of individual statements as well as at the level of the software architecture -which is illustrated by using TYPEEXPLORER to browse an industrial COBOL system of 100,000 lines of code.