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UBC Theses and Dissertations
Conceptual modules: expressing desired structure for software reengineering Baniassad, Elisa L.A.
Abstract
Many tools have been built to analyze the source code of software systems. Most of these tools do not adequately support software reengineering activities because they do not allow a software engineer to analyze both existing and desired software structures. This thesis describes the conceptual modules approach and supporting tool that aids the engineer in the investigation and analysis of desired structure with relation to the existing structure of source code. This approach allows a selected subset of lines of source to be treated as a logical unit. This subset is referred to as a conceptual module. The lines of code that comprise a conceptual module need not be contiguous, nor must they be related in any way in the source. Using variable dependence and control transfer information extracted from the source, the tool analyzes the conceptual module's constituent lines of code to determine its interface. Additionally, the data- or control-flow between two or more conceptual modules can be examined as a means of eliciting the relationships between the modules and between conceptual modules and the source. To allow the necessary flexibility in analysis, the functionality of the tool can be tailored through a programmatic query language component. The usefulness of the tool has been investigated in two different ways. First, the tool was applied to several different reengineering scenarios: restructuring from procedural to object-oriented program design, re-modularizing code in an existing program with little structure, and extracting a portion of source for reuse. For each scenario, several existing program understanding tools were also applied to provide a basis of comparison between existing approaches and the conceptual modules approach. Second, the tool was successfully applied to actual reengineering tasks by two different groups of users. One group eliminated unnecessary parts of a system's source to improve efficiency and to enable parallelization of a 47,000 line, 56-file software package. The other group performed analysis on a procedural program so as to better understand how to transform the existing source into an object-oriented version.
Item Metadata
Title |
Conceptual modules: expressing desired structure for software reengineering
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1997
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Description |
Many tools have been built to analyze the source code of software systems. Most
of these tools do not adequately support software reengineering activities because
they do not allow a software engineer to analyze both existing and desired software
structures.
This thesis describes the conceptual modules approach and supporting tool
that aids the engineer in the investigation and analysis of desired structure with
relation to the existing structure of source code. This approach allows a selected
subset of lines of source to be treated as a logical unit. This subset is referred to as
a conceptual module. The lines of code that comprise a conceptual module need not
be contiguous, nor must they be related in any way in the source. Using variable
dependence and control transfer information extracted from the source, the tool
analyzes the conceptual module's constituent lines of code to determine its interface.
Additionally, the data- or control-flow between two or more conceptual modules can
be examined as a means of eliciting the relationships between the modules and
between conceptual modules and the source. To allow the necessary flexibility in
analysis, the functionality of the tool can be tailored through a programmatic query
language component.
The usefulness of the tool has been investigated in two different ways. First,
the tool was applied to several different reengineering scenarios: restructuring from
procedural to object-oriented program design, re-modularizing code in an existing
program with little structure, and extracting a portion of source for reuse. For each
scenario, several existing program understanding tools were also applied to provide
a basis of comparison between existing approaches and the conceptual modules
approach. Second, the tool was successfully applied to actual reengineering tasks by
two different groups of users. One group eliminated unnecessary parts of a system's
source to improve efficiency and to enable parallelization of a 47,000 line, 56-file
software package. The other group performed analysis on a procedural program so
as to better understand how to transform the existing source into an object-oriented
version.
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Extent |
3646459 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-04-27
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0051258
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
1998-05
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.