Download or read book Building Reverse Engineering Tools with Software Components written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation explores a new approach to construct tools in the domain of reverse engineering. The approach uses already available software components -- such as off-the-shelf components and integrated development environments -- as building blocks, combining and customizing them programmatically to realize the desired functional and non-functional requirements. This approach can be characterized as component-based tool-building, as opposed to traditional tool-building, which typically develops most of the tool's functionalities from scratch. The dissertation focuses on research tools that are constructed in a university or research lab (and then possibly evaluated in an industrial setting). Often the motivation to build a research tool is a proof-of-concept implementation. Tool-building is a necessary part of research -- but it is a costly one. Traditional approaches to tool building have resulted in tools that have a high degree of custom code and exhibit little reuse. This approach offers the most flexibility, but can be costly and can result in highly idiosyncratic tools that are difficult to use. To compensate for the drawbacks of building tools from scratch, researchers have started to reuse existing functionality, leading towards an approach that leverages components as building blocks. However, this emerging approach is pursued in an ad hoc manner reminiscent of craftsmanship rather than professional engineering. The goal of this dissertation is to advance the current state of component-based tool-building towards a more disciplined, predictable approach. To achieve this goal, the dissertation first summarizes and evaluates relevant tool-building experiences and case studies, and then distills these into practical advice in the form of lessons learned, and a process framework for tool builders to follow. The dissertation uniquely combines two areas, reverse engineering and software components. The former addresses the constructed tool's application domai.