The FAPU Workbench

Before software can be adapted to changing economical, organisational and technical conditions, it has to be “understood”. Understanding involves obtaining all the information belonging to the application system in question by means of analysis, interpretation and evaluation of the software´s structures (the individual programs of the various program systems plus existing documentation) and of the context and exact nature of its use (e.g. business processes and workflows). Within a program of research into tools supporting application understanding, the Fraunhofer Institut Software- und Systemtechnik (ISST) has developed a prototype of the FAPU (FORTRAN Application and Program Understanding) Workbench. A special feature of FAPU is that it distinguishes between program information and non-program information and enables interactive linking within and between these two types of information. FAPU can handle files consisting of a mixture of programs in different languages, control commands and data. Its robust parser can analyse a wide range of FORTRAN dialects and deal with unknown constructs. The location of comments within the source code is preserved, new comments can be added and existing ones modified. The analysis is always performed with respect to a platform model containing information about the computer type, the operating system and the compiler. As well as many analysis options and the synchronization of their presentation, FAPU also enables visualization of COMMON blocks