Symbolic Analysis as a Basis for Program Comprehension

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.