DOCKET: A CASE tool and method to support software system understanding and modification

Software maintenance tools, which have evolved to include an emphasis on reuse, range from source code analyzers to semi-intelligent tools which seek to reconstruct system designs and specification documents from source code. It is clear, however, that relying solely upon source code as the basis for reverse engineering has many problems. These problems include poor abstraction, leading to overdetailed specification models and the inability to link other parts of a software system, such as documentation and user expertise, to the underlying code. This paper describes the work of the ESPRIT DOCKET project, which has developed a prototype environment to support the development of a system model linking the user-oriented business aspects of a system to operational code using a variety of knowledge source inputs (code, documents and user expertise). The aim is to provide a coherent model to form the basis for system understanding and to support the software change and evolution process.