Fact extraction and code auditing with Columbus and SourceAudit

Abstract

Automatic fact extraction from software systems is the fundamental building block in the process of understanding the relationships among a system's elements. We demonstrate the reverse engineering framework called Columbus which is able to automatically extract facts from C++ source code and how the extracted facts can be used in practice. We also mention a special-purpose tool that was developed on top of the Columbus framework. This tool, called SourceAudit, is a code auditor that is able to investigate source code and check it against rules that describe the preferred properties of the code.