Environment for Visualization, Reliability, Knowledge Acquisition in EquationalProgramming

摘要

We investigated the concept of a visual software environment which facilitatesman-machine cooperation during software development. The focus is on 'oracle' operations performed by a human user during the man-machine cooperation. In the environment, graphics and equations are combined to enhance software understanding that is essential in software development. The environment consists of the following components: (1) visual programming: an icon-based graph editor is used for composing an array graph of an equational language program, for interactive syntax analysis, and for consistency checking of the array graph and equations; (2) compilation: an equational language program is statically checked in accordance with its semantics during compilation; (3) equational visual testing: test adequacy criteria are defined for the equational visual testing; the testing process becomes simple and intuitive; oracle operations such as path selection, path examination, finding test input values, monitoring execution, and evaluation are facilitated; (4) verification: equational reasoning is combined with graphical representation of programs; and, (5) knowledge acquisition: expertise in old legacy code in procedural language such as algorithms and methods is transferred to rules of knowledge bases via equations.