A Meta-model for Representing Language-independent Primary Dependency Structures

摘要

Reverse engineering creates models of software systems, at a higher level of abstraction or in a form suitable to a particular analysis. This article presents a meta-model that provides a unitary way of describing primary dependency structures in software systems. It extracts and conceptualizes similarities between different programming languages which, moreover, belong to any of the object-oriented as well as the procedural programming paradigms. The proposed meta-model is validated by the implementation of different tools for model extraction from programs written in Java, C# (CIL) and ANSI C. The utility of the proposed meta-model is shown by supporting a number of different analysis applications such as architectural reconstruction, impact analysis, modularization analysis, refactoring decisions.