The introspection technique in maintenance metaprogramming

Deals with a specific metaprogramming technique which is useful in the maintenance of data-driven software. Data-driven software includes programs whose algorithms are controlled by tables of data, such as table-driven parsers. A maintenance metaprogram for such software must have the ability to inspect and process both the program source code as well as the data tables developed by the software at run time. The easiest way to make the data tables available to the maintenance metaprogram is to run the original program until the data tables are developed in memory. Control is then passed to the maintenance metaprogram, which inspects these tables and the source code of the original program to carry out the maintenance operations. In essence, this involves the construction of a hybrid cross between the original program and the maintenance metaprogram. A case study is considered in which the introspection technique was used in maintenance of a metaprogramming system