Title :
Software engineering by source transformation - experience with TXL
Author :
Cordy, James R. ; Dean, Thomas R. ; Malton, Andrew J. ; Schneider, Kevin A.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. & Inf. Sci., Queen´´s Univ., Kingston, Ont., Canada
Abstract :
Many tasks in software engineering can be characterized as source to source transformations. Design recovery, software restructuring, forward engineering, language translation, platform migration and code reuse can all be understood as transformations from one source text to another. TXL, the Tree Transformation Language, is a programming language specifically designed to support rule-based source to source transformation. Originally conceived as a tool for exploring programming language dialects, TXL has evolved into a general purpose software transformation system that has proven well suited to a wide range of software maintenance and reengineering tasks, including the design recovery, analysis and automated reprogramming of billions of lines of commercial Cobol, PL/I and RPG code for the Year 2000. The authors introduce the basic features of modern TXL and its use in a range of software engineering applications, with an emphasis on how each task can be achieved by source transformation
Keywords :
grammars; high level languages; program compilers; program interpreters; reverse engineering; software maintenance; software reusability; system recovery; systems re-engineering; PL/I; RPG code; TXL; Tree Transformation Language; automated reprogramming; code reuse; commercial Cobol; design recovery; forward engineering; language translation; platform migration; programming language dialects; rule-based source to source transformation; software engineering applications; software maintenance; software reengineering tasks; software restructuring; software transformation system; source transformation; Computer science; Councils; Electronic switching systems; Information science; Optimized production technology; Pattern matching;
Conference_Titel :
Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, 2001. Proceedings. First IEEE International Workshop on
Conference_Location :
Florence
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-1387-5
DOI :
10.1109/SCAM.2001.972678
