A cliche-based environment to support architectural reverse engineering

Paper reprinted from ICSM ´96. When programmers perform maintenance tasks, program understanding is required. One of the first activities in understanding a software system is identifying its subsystems and their relations, i.e. its software architecture. Since a large part of the effort is spent in creating a mental model of the system under study, tools can help maintainers in managing the evolution of legacy systems, by showing them architectural information. In this paper, an environment for the architectural analysis of software systems is described. The environment is based on a hierarchical architectural model that drives the application of a set of recognizers, each producing a different architectural view of the system or of some of its parts. Recognizers embody knowledge about architectural cliches and use flow analysis techniques to make their output more accurate