Tobias Kuipers

The ASF+SDF Meta-environment: A Component-Based Language Development Environment

The Asf+Sdf 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.

A Practical Model for Measuring Maintainability

The amount of effort needed to maintain a software system is related to the technical quality of the source code of that system. The ISO 9126 model for software product quality recognizes maintainability as one of the 6 main characteristics of software product quality, with adaptability, changeability, stability, and testability as subcharacteristics of maintainability. Remarkably, ISO 9126 does not provide a consensual set of measures for estimating maintainability on the basis of a systems source code. On the other hand, the maintainability index has been proposed to calculate a single number that expresses the maintainability of a system. In this paper, we discuss several problems with the MI, and we identify a number of requirements to be fulfilled by a maintainability model to be usable in practice. We sketch a new maintainability model that alleviates most of these problems, and we discuss our experiences with using such as system for IT management consultancy activities.

An empirical model of technical debt and interest

Cunningham introduced the metaphor of technical debt as guidance for software developers that must trade engineering quality against short-term goals. We revisit the technical debt metaphor, and translate it into terms that can help IT executives better understand their IT investments. An approach is proposed to quantify debts (cost to fix technical quality issues) and interest (extra cost spent on maintenance due to technical quality issues). Our approach is based on an empirical assessment method of software quality developed at the Software Improvement Group (SIG). The core part of the technical debt calculation is constructed on the basis of empirical data of 44 systems that are currently being monitored by SIG. In a case study, we apply the approach to a real system, and discuss how the results provide useful insights on important questions related to IT investment such as the return on investment (ROI) in software quality improvement.

Object-oriented Tree Traversal with JJForester

textabstractWe want to use the advanced language processing technology available in the {sc Asf+Sdf in combination with general purpose programming languages. In particular, we want to combine the syntax definition formalism {sc Sdf and the associated components that support generalized LR parsing, with the object-oriented language Java. To this end, we implemented JJForester, a tool that generates class structures from{sc Sdf grammar definitions. The generated class structures implement a number of emph{design patterns to facilitate construction and traversal of parse trees represented by object structures. In a detailed case study, we demonstrate how program analyses and transformations can be constructed with JJForester.

Feature-Based Product Line Instantiation Using Source-Level Packages

In this paper, we discuss the construction of software products from customer-specific feature selections. We address variability management with the Feature Description Language (FDL) to capture variation points of product line architectures. We describe feature packaging, which covers selecting and packaging implementation components according to feature selections using the autobundle tool. Finally, we discuss a generic approach, based on the abstract factory design pattern, to make instantiated (customer-specific) variability accessible in applications.The solutions and techniques presented in this paper are based on our experience with the product line architecture of the commercial documentation generator DocGen.

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.

Rapid system understanding: Two COBOL case studies

Rapid system understanding is required in the planning, feasibility assessment and cost estimating phases of a system renovation project. In this paper we apply a number of analyses on two large legacy COBOL systems from the banking field. We describe the analyses performed and discuss possible interpretations of these analyses. Lessons learned include: (1) The open architecture adopted is satisfactory, and can take advantage of a wide range of understanding tools available; and (2) To handle inter-system variability effectively, the flexibility of lexical analysis is required.

Types and concept analysis for legacy systems

We combine type inference and concept analysis in order to gain insight into legacy software systems. Type inference for COBOL yields the types for variables and program parameters. These types are used to perform mathematical concept analysis on legacy systems. We have developed ConceptRefinery, a tool for interactively manipulating concepts. We show how this tool facilitates experiments with concept analysis, and lets reengineers employ their knowledge of the legacy system to refine the results of concept analysis.

Object-oriented tree traversal with J. J. Forester

We want to use the advanced language processing technology available in the ASF+SDF in combination with general purpose programming languages. In particular, we want to combine the syntax definition formalism (SDF) and the associated components that support generalized LR parsing, with the object-oriented language Java. To this end, we implemented JJForester, a tool that generates class structures from SDF grammar definitions. The generated class structures implement a number of design patterns to facilitate construction and traversal of parse trees represented by object structures. In a detailed case study, we demonstrate how program analyses and transformations for languages of non-trivial size can be constructed with JJForester.