Domain analysis and reverse engineering

Current reverse engineering technology is typically based on program analysis methods such as parsing and data flow analysis. As such, it is limited in what it can accomplish. Knowledge of the application domain containing a program can help overcome this limit and aid the comprehension process. The paper discusses the relationship of application domain analysis and reverse engineering. Two case studies are presented. The first describes how domain knowledge, expressed as an object-oriented framework, can aid the reverse engineering process for a well-understood domain. The second studies how reverse engineering can be used to build a domain model. Issues raised by the confluence of domain analysis and reverse engineering are discussed, and implications on future work in the area are suggested