Reverse Engineering of the Interaction Diagrams from C++ Code

  • Authors:
  • Paolo Tonella;Alessandra Potrich

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • ICSM '03 Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

In object oriented programming, the functionalities ofa system result from the interactions (message exchanges)among the objects allocated by the system. While designingobject interactions is far more complex than designingthe object structure in forward engineering, the problemof understanding object interactions during code evolutionis even harder, because the related information is spreadacross the code.In this paper, a technique for the automatic extractionof UML interaction diagrams from C++ code is proposed.The algorithm is based on a static, conservative flow analysis,that approximates the behavior of the system in anyexecution and for any possible input. Applicability of theapproach to large software is achieved by means of twomechanisms: partial analysis and focusing. Usage of ourmethod on a real world, large C++ system confirmed itsviability.