M.G.J. van den Brand

Current parsing techniques in software renovation considered harmful

We evaluate the parsing technology used by people working in the reengineering industry. We discuss parser generators and complete systems like Yacc, TXL, TAMPR, REFINE, CobolTransformer, COSMOS, and ASF+SDF. We explain the merits and drawbacks of the various techniques. We conclude that current technology may cause problems for the reengineering industry and that modular and/or compositional parsing techniques are a possible solution.

Control flow normalization for COBOL/CICS legacy systems

We propose a practical incremental approach to perform control flow normalization of COBOL/CICS legacy systems using a software renovation factory. The normalization improves the maintainability of such systems. A consequence of our normalization is that we reengineer the interface so that such systems can be accessed via intranet or Internet. Moreover, the performance of such systems is improved. We applied our approach to a mortgage system written in COBOL and CICS.

Reverse engineering and system renovation—an annotated bibliography

To facilitate research in the field of reverse engineering and system renovation we have compiled an annotated bibliography. We put the contributions not only in alphabetical order but also grouped by topic so that readers focusing on a certain topic can read their annotations in the alphabetical listing. We also compiled an annotated list of pointers to information about reverse engineering and system renovation that can be reached via Internet. For the sake of ease we also incorporated a brief introduction to the field of reverse engineering.

The Asf+Sdf Meta-Environment: A Component-Based Language Development Environment

Abstract The A sf +S df Meta-Environment is an interactive development environment for the automatic generation of interactive systems for constructing language definitions and generating tools for them. Over the years, this system has been used in a variety of academic and commercial projects ranging from formal program manipulation to conversion of COBOL systems. Since the existing implementation of the Meta-Environment started exhibiting more and more characteristics of a legacy system, we decided to build a completely new, component-based, version. We demonstrate this new system and stress its open architecture.

TIDE: A Generic Debugging Framework --- Tool Demonstration ---

A language specific interactive debugger is one of the tools that we expect in any mature programming environment. We present applications of TIDE: a generic debugging framework that is related to the ASF+SDF Meta-Environment. TIDE can be applied to different levels of debugging that occur in language design. Firstly, TIDE was used to obtain a full-fledged debugger for language specifications based on term rewriting. Secondly, TIDE can be instantiated for any other programming language, including but not limited to domain specific languages that are defined and implemented using ASF+SDF. We demonstrate the common debugging interface, and indicate the amount of effort needed to instantiate new debuggers based on TIDE.

Term Rewriting for Sale

Abstract Term rewriting has a large potential for industrial applications, but these applications are always larger than one could ever dream of: huge sets of rewrite rules and gigantic terms to rewrite pose interesting challenges for implementors and theoreticians alike. We give a brief overview of the generation of term-rewriting-based tools as done in the A SF +S DF Meta-Environment and then we sketch two major applications of term rewriting: transformation of legacy COBOL systems and compilation of A SF +S DF to C. Based on these experiences we suggest the study of topics that could further advance the use of term rewriting in industrial applications: persistent term databases, generalized LR parsing versus parallel term rewriting, and coordination languages versus strategy languages. It will turn out that we have an “alien” view on research in term rewriting: properties like confluence and termination are of very limited use when selling term rewriting to industry.

Generation of components for software renovation factories from context-free grammars

The authors present an approach for the generation of components for a software renovation factory. These components are generated from a context-free grammar definition that recognizes the code that has to be renovated. They generate analysis and transformation components that can be instantiated with a specific transformation or analysis task. They apply their approach to COBOL and discuss the construction of realistic software renovation components using the approach.

A language development environment for Eclipse

The ASF+SDF Meta-Environment provides a collection of tools for the generation of programming environments. We show how Eclipse can be extended with these generic language tools. By integrating the GUI and text editor of the Meta-Environment with Eclipse using TOOLBUS technology, we demonstrate the integration of third party, non-Java, software in Eclipse. By doing so, we create an experimentation framework for further programming language research. We describe our experiences and sketch future work.

Term Rewriting with Type-safe Traversal Functions

Abstract Term rewriting is an appealing technique for performing program analysis and program transformation. Tree (term) traversal is frequently used but is not supported by standard term rewriting. In this paper, many-sorted first-order term rewriting is extended with automatic tree traversal by adding two primitive tree traversal strategies and complementing them with three types of traversals. These so-called traversal functions can be either top-down or bottom-up. They can be sort preserving, mapping to a single sort, or a combination of these two. Traversal functions have a simple design, their application is type-safe in a first-order many-sorted setting and can be implemented efficiently. We describe the operational semantics of traversal functions and discuss applications.

Applications of the ASF+SDF meta-environment

Generic language technology research focuses on the development of fundamental techniques for language processing. The Asf+Sdf Meta-Environment, an interactive development environment for the automatic generation of interactive systems, is an example of research in this field. The Meta-Environment has been applied in various projects in order to enable the development of high quality tools for the analysis and transformation of large software systems written in languages such as C, Java, Cobol, and PL/I. The Meta-Environment offers the interactive construction of language definitions and the generation of tools given these definitions. Over the years, this system has been used in a variety of academic and industrial projects ranging from formal program manipulation to conversion of industrial Cobol systems.