Reverse Engineering of Computer-Based Control Systems

Abstract

This article presents a process for the reengineering of computer-based control systems, and describes tools that automate portions of the process. The intermediate representation (IR) for capturing features of computer-based systems during reverse engineering is presented. A novel feature of the IR is that it incorporates the control system software architecture, a view that enables information to be captured at five levels of granularity: the program level, the task level, the package level, the subprogram level, and the statement level. A reverse engineering toolset that constructs the IR from Ada programs, displays the IR, and computes concurrency, communication and object-orientedness metrics is presented. Also described is the design of hypermedia techniques that enhance the usability of the reverse engineering tools.

A metrics-driven approach for utilizing concurrency in object-oriented real-time systems

“…The assessment and concurrency enhancement steps are repeated until all timing requirements are met. This paper describes a research project [15,14,10,17,19,7,13] that is producing techniques and software tools to compute inter-object concurrency metrics for object-oriented Ada software; the tools also use the concurrency metrics to decide how to partition and map the objects/packages onto the nodes of concurrent computers in ways that allow conformance to timing constraints. The partitioning tool produces a platform-independent description of the partitions in the DADS language [6].…”

“…The main window of the GUI (shown in the lower left of Figure 2) has a set of buttons for viewing various aspects of a concurrent, object-oriented, real-time system. Specifically, it allows viewing of call and/or rendezvous graphs [13,17], of the distribution specification (the object-to-processor mapping) [13], of metrics [16] pertaining to object-orientedness and concurrency, and of dynamic behavior [15]. In the graphical depiction of a partitioning specification (shown in the upper portions of Figure specifically, tasks appear as boxes, package/object instances appear as circles, methods are shown as triangles, and data structures are represented as elongated rectangles.…”

A toolset for the reengineering of complex computer systems

“…the dependence relations between various program units, and provides additional help with the understanding of the system to be reengineered. The methods described as well as initial versions of the tool set have been successfully applied to components of the Navy's AEGIS Weapon System [20]. In order to increase usability of the system, a Web version is currently under development, allowing remote access to the tools without the need to install them locally.…”