Dowsing: a tool framework for domain-oriented browsing of software artifacts

Abstract

Program understanding relates a computer program to the goals and requirements it is designed to accomplish. Application-domain analysis is a source of information that can aid program understanding by guiding the source-code analysis and providing structure to its results. The authors use the term "dowsing" to describe the process of exploring software and the related documentation from an application-domain point of view. They have designed a tool framework to support dowsing and have populated it with a variety of commercial and research tools.