A Framework for Reverse Engineering : Building Tools for Software Quality Analysis and Software Understanding

ISBN-13: 9783639132250 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 140 str.

Thomas Panas

Opis

Reverse engineering is an activity supporting thecomprehension of complex software systems.Considering the size of modern software systems,comprehension is anything but simple and must besupported by tools. Many components (tools) forsoftware retrieval, analysis and visualization existand are already considered best practice.Unfortunately, these stand-alone components areineffective by themselves. It is therefore importantthat users be able to assemble arbitrary componentsinto powerful reverse engineering tools. Componentassembly, however, is not a trivial task. In thisbook, we describe the VizzAnalyzer Framework, acomposition system that has been designed andimplemented to support building reverse engineeringtools. The framework facilitates the flexible andrapid composition of user-defined tools. Componentsare adapted at design time and selected and composedat run time. Moreover, we present two evaluations ofthe framework, validating its qualities. This book isfor anyone who is interested in software reverseengineering, its process and tools, as well as anyonewho wants to learn about automated software qualityassessment.

O autorze

Thomas Panas, PhD, is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He
graduated from Vaxjo University in Sweden. His recent work
includes research in software visualization, binary analysis,
high performance computing and reverse engineering.