Tools for Software Architecture Visualization
The problem of supporting large mixed-language software systems is of great importance to the Navy and beyond. Often the only reliable source of information about their architecture is the source code itself. Having a reliable way to automatically create visualizations of the architecture is key to understanding the system, and for planning changes. Under a Navy-sponsored SBIR contract, GrammaTech is developing of a set of tools for automatically extracting UML design diagrams directly from the source code. The techniques are mostly based on a static view of how objects in the code interrelate, and will allow the extraction of the class diagram, the object diagram, the interaction diagram, and the state diagram. We are also exploring additional techniques for helping users understand the structure of less well-structured programs. These tools will be based on our existing static analysis technology, which is already highly developed for C and C++, and for which a version for Ada 95 is currently under development. The tool will produce output in the form of XML objects in a standard format that can imported into existing UML design tools.
Many businesses have a need for tools to help support the maintenance of legacy mixed-language systems. The tool we propose to develop will reduce the expense of adapting existing software for new purposes. It will support C/C++ and Ada, so it will have wide appeal in the commercial and military/aerospace sectors.