A Framework for Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering is an activity supporting the§comprehension of complex software systems.§Considering the size of modern software systems,§comprehension is anything but simple and must be§supported by tools. Many components (tools) for§software retrieval, analysis and visualization exist§and are already considered best practice.§Unfortunately, these stand-alone components are§ineffective by themselves. It is therefore important§that users be able to assemble arbitrary components§into powerful reverse engineering tools. Component§assembly, however, is not a trivial task. In this§book, we describe the VizzAnalyzer Framework, a§composition system that has been designed and§implemented to support building reverse engineering§tools. The framework facilitates the flexible and§rapid composition of user-defined tools. Components§are adapted at design time and selected and composed§at run time. Moreover, we present two evaluations of§the framework, validating its qualities. This book is§for anyone who is interested in software reverse§engineering, its process and tools, as well as anyone§who wants to learn about automated software quality§assessment.