Tackling the abstraction problem for reverse engineering in a system re-engineering approach.

Yang, Hongji; Liu, Xiaodong; Zedan, Hussein

Abstract

It is widely accepted that reverse engineering has three components: restructuring, comprehension and production of formal specification. In this paper, we advocate that the three components could be achieved in a systematic approach by successfully applying a series of sound rules.The key approach to comprehension and the production of formal specification is a notion of abstraction. Abstraction is often interpreted as the act of hiding irrelevant details. What constitute as relevant details is often left open to different interpretations.A unified approach for reverse engineering is described within which the notion of abstraction is classified and precisely defined. Abstraction rules are given and applied to various small examples.

• Start Date: Mar 16, 1998
• End Date: Mar 19, 1998
• Publication Date: 1998-03
• Deposit Date: Jul 23, 2010
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 284
• Book Title: the proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM'98)
• ISBN: 0-8186-8779-7
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSM.1998.738520
• Keywords: reverse engineering; restructuring; comprehension; production; formal specification; abstraction; wide spectrum language; re-engineering; object-oriented; interval temporal logic
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/3227
• Publisher URL: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/ICSM.1998.738520