During the last decade, the number of software applications that have been deployed as a collection of components implemented in different programming languages and paradigms has increased considerably. When such applications are maintained, traditional program comprehension and reengineering techniques may not be adequate. In this context, this working session aims to stimulate discussion around key issues relating to the comprehension, reengineering, and maintenance of multi-language software applications. Such issues include, but are not limited to, the formalization, management, exploration, and presentation of multi-language program dependencies, as well as the development of practical toolsets for automating and easing the comprehension and maintenance of multi-language software

Kontogiannis, Kostas

Linos, Panos K

Wong, Kenny

Digital Commons @ Butler University

Butler UniversityDigital Commons @ Butler UniversityScholarship and Professional Work - LAS College of Liberal Arts & Sciences2006Comprehension and Maintenance of Large ScaleMulti-Language Software Applications: OpenIssues and ChallengesKostas KontogiannisPanos K. LinosButler University, linos@butler.eduKenny WongFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/facsch_papersPart of the Software Engineering CommonsThis Conference Proceeding is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Digital Commons @ ButlerUniversity. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ ButlerUniversity. For more information, please contact fgaede@butler.edu.Recommended CitationProceedings of the 22nd international IEEE Conference on Software Maintenance. (P. Linos, with K. Kontogiannis and K. Wong)"Comprehension and Maintenance of Large Scale Multi-Language Software Applications: Open Issues and Challenges. Philadelphia,Sept. 2006Comprehension and Maintenance ofLarge Scale Multi-Language Software ApplicationsKostas KontogiannisUniversity of Waterloo, Canadakostas@swen.uwaterloo.caPanos LinosButler University, USAlinos@butler.eduKenny WongUniversity of Albertakenw@cs.ualberta.caAbstractDuring the last decade, the number of software appli-cations that have been deployed as a collection of compo-nents implemented in different programming languages andparadigms has increased considerably. When such applica-tions are maintained, traditional program comprehensionand reengineering techniques may not be adequate. In thiscontext, this working session aims to stimulate discussionaround key issues relating to the comprehension, reengi-neering, and maintenance of multi-language software ap-plications. Such issues include, but are not limited to, theformalization, management, exploration, and presentationof multi-language program dependencies, as well as the de-velopment of practical toolsets for automating and easingthe comprehension and maintenance of multi-language soft-ware.1. IntroductionToday, software engineers often use multiple languagesto implement a single software application. In 1998, Ca-pers Jones documented in his book that at least one thirdof the software applications at that time were written us-ing two different programming languages [1]. In addition,he estimated that ten percent of all applications incorporatethree or more languages. Today, these percentages are muchhigher.There are several advantages associated with the devel-opment of multi-language (ML) software applications. Forinstance, database queries can be handled easily and effi-ciently when various query languages such as SQL are em-bedded in general purpose languages such as C++ and/orJava. In addition, reuse of existing software is often an im-portant reason behind building ML software. For example,predefined and pretested libraries implemented in procedu-ral languages may be included and used by newer softwareapplications developed using object-oriented languages. Asanother notable example, Microsoft’s Visual Studio .NETenvironment is widely used to develop ML (i.e., combina-tion of Visual Basic, C#, C++, etc.) Windows and/or Webapplications.ML software must evolve constantly to accommodatechanges in the application domain. This evolution demandscontinuous modifications that may increase software com-plexity and eventually reduce quality. Therefore, the needfor broad research efforts and open discussions related tothe maintenance and evolution of ML software becomes acompelling issue.2. BackgroundIt has been documented that one important factor inunderstanding, reengineering, and maintaining programswritten in just one programming language is the detectionof program dependencies [6]. A program dependency ispresent when one entity within a program relates to otherentities within another piece of code. For instance, a pro-gram written in one language may call functions or accessother entities of code written in another language. To datethere has been little standardization effort in this area and,as a consequence, the resulting ML programs become diffi-cult to understand and maintain.Moreover, it has been shown that the visualization ofsuch program dependencies can facilitate program compre-hension and reengineering activities [2]. Finally, recent pro-totype tools for measuring and visualizing the complexity ofML software in the VS.NET environment have been devel-oped [3].3. Open issues for discussionThe working session will focus on the following openresearch issues related to the comprehension, reengineering,and maintenance of ML software.Formalization and modelingML systems pose a whole new range of challenges onextracting information and modeling dependencies betweenthe components. Some of these challenges relate to the useof different language constructs with varying semantics, andthe diverse designs such ML systems possess. Some of theinteresting questions that arise in the formalization of MLsystem dependencies include how we deal with differentlanguage semantics, whether we need to define specializedmetamodels for ML system dependencies, and whether weneed to adapt existing mathematical theories (e.g. graphtheory, set theory) to better formalize and capture ML sys-tem dependencies.Extraction, discovery, and storageIt is not enough to have program understanding tools thatconsider each language independently as an isolated island.We need to also bridge these islands to form a more com-plete understanding. For example, programmers often needto follow control flows in software, and this activity shouldnot be constrained by language boundaries. Thus, an impor-tant issue is how to manage ML dependencies, including in-tegrated fact extraction for constituent individual languages,static and dynamic analysis to discover ML dependencies,pattern recognizers that exploit cross-language linkage con-ventions [4, 5], and suitable data models and efficient stor-age mechanisms to represent the gathered information.Exploration, queries, and knowledge managementProgrammers often need to follow control and data flowsin software systems, without being constrained by languageboundaries. Thus, we need effective graph navigation tech-niques to explore dependencies in ML software. Also im-portant are queries to match patterns that span languages, todiscover high-level graph abstractions, or reveal potentialanomalies or inconsistencies such as malformed or missingstubs in linkage mechanisms. If changes are necessary, akey challenge is how to relate corrections to graph informa-tion back to the original code.Presentation and usabilityAnother challenge is how to transfer the discovered in-formation into the minds of software engineers to assist withtheir required evolution tasks. Many issues in software vi-sualization arise, including appropriate presentations, aes-thetic criteria for graph layout [7], and the relation of in-formation presented across multiple views. To effectivelyhighlight key issues in ML systems, we need abilities to fil-ter and progressively disclose information.Tool supportProcessing large volumes of information that can be ex-tracted from ML systems requires the use of sophisticatedtools and tractable algorithms. Consequently, some of thechallenges that need to be answered include: the type oftools that are required to understand, analyze and maintainML software; the coordination and architecture model thatis required for such tools to interoperate and share data; andhow new tools can be seamlessly integrated in such an en-vironment (possibly using a publish-subscribe paradigm orservice-oriented architectural style.Impact on software maintenance processesThe use of tools to analyze, maintain, and evolve largeML systems is bound to have an effect on maintenanceand evolution process models. Some questions that arisein ML analysis and maintenance include the type of metricsor other quantifiable means to reason about the evolutionprocess, to measure the impact of ML software on evolu-tion effort, and to establish a common measurement frame-work. Finally, an interesting challenge is to investigate theissues pertaining to designing and conducting effective ex-perimental studies that can evaluate different ML systemanalysis and maintenance techniques in practical settings.4. Working session activitiesWe expect that this session will attract researchers withan interest in understanding, reengineering, and maintain-ing multi-language software applications.The working session will start with a few pre-invitedshort anchor presentations. The speakers will review in ad-vance the open issues outlined in Section 3 and present theirviews during their talks.After each presentation, we will allow for some clarifica-tion questions and a brief discussion. The major objective isto structure the working session around an interactive brain-storming period where the attendees will lay a roadmap ofpossible research directions and challenges to address theproblem of analyzing, maintaining, and evolving large MLapplications.Furthermore, all results produced by the working sessionwill be consolidated in a final report, which includes a copyof all presentation slides, a summary of important pointsmade during the discussions, a suggested research frame-work, and a list of session participants and possibly inter-ested researchers. We will post this report at the conferenceWeb site for post-conference networking and collaboration.5. Background of organizersPanos Linos is a Professor of Computer Science andSoftware Engineering at Butler University. Before joiningButler, Panos was a Professor and the Chair of the Com-puter Science Department at Tennessee Technological Uni-versity. His research activities focus on the areas of soft-ware maintenance, reengineering, and comprehension ofsoftware. While at Butler University, he founded and cur-rently directs the Center for Applied Software EngineeringResearch (CeASER), where he conducts funded researchwith his students, colleagues, and local information tech-nology companies. He has also founded the EPICS (Engi-neering Projects In Community Service) program at ButlerUniversity.Kostas Kontogiannis is an Associate Professor at the De-partment of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Uni-versity of Waterloo, Canada. He is working in the areas ofsoftware reverse engineering, software reengineering, andsoftware systems integration. He has been the recipientof three IBM University Partnership Awards and a CanadaFoundation for Innovation (CFI) Award. He is also a visit-ing scientist at the IBM Center for Advanced Studies in theIBM Toronto Laboratory.Kenny Wong is an Associate Professor in the Depart-ment of Computing Science at the University of Alberta.His main areas of research include software comprehen-sion, software evolution, and software visualization. Thisresearch includes building and using integrated environ-ments for reverse engineering, and devising strategies to un-derstand and evolve diverse software systems (supported inpart by an Eclipse Innovation Grant). He is General Chair ofthe 2007 International Conference on Program Comprehen-sion in Banff, and Program Chair of the 2008 InternationalConference on Software Maintenance in Beijing.References[1] C. Jones. Estimating Software Costs. McGraw-Hill, NewYork, 1998.[2] P. Linos, Z. Chen, S. Berrier, and B. O’Rourke. A tool for un-derstanding multi-language program dependencies. In Pro-ceedings of the 11th IEEE International Workshop on Pro-gram Comprehension (IWPC 2003), pages 64–72, May 2003.[3] G. McCullough, E. Maier, and P. Linos. A metrics tool formulti-language .NET software applications. In Proceedingsof the 18th Undergraduate Research Conference, pages 42–43, April 2006.[4] D. Moise and K. Wong. Extracting and representing cross-language dependencies in diverse software systems. In Pro-ceedings of the 12th Working Conference on Reverse Engi-neering (WCRE 2005), pages 209–218, November 2005.[5] D. Moise, K. Wong, H. Hoover, and D. Hou. Reverse engi-neering scripting language extensions. In Proceedings of the14th IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehen-sion (ICPC 2006), pages 295–304, June 2006.[6] N. Wilde and R. Huitt. Maintenance support for object-oriented programs. IEEE Transactions in Software Engineer-ing, 18(12):1038–1044, 1992.[7] K. Wong and D. Sun. On evaluating the layout of UML dia-grams for program comprehension. Software Quality Journal,14(3), 2006. To appear.

Comprehension and Maintenance of Large Scale Multi-Language Software Applications: Open Issues and Challenges

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Comprehension and Maintenance of Large Scale Multi-Language Software Applications: Open Issues and Challenges

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