A knowledge-based toolkit for software visualisation

Understanding an existing program includes the analysis of the program code, as, very often, the program code is the only reliable source of information about the program. Many code analysis tools offer the user a possibility to examine the program code through a predefined set of graphical views. These tools can be considerably improved by using knowledge-based techniques. Knowledge-based code analysis tools allow the user to employ his own knowledge about programs and their analysis. The paper discusses a knowledge-based toolkit for graphical presentation, or visualisation, of programs. It is advocated that the introduction of knowledge-based techniques increases the extensibility and modifiability of the code analysers. In addition, the user of a knowledge-based toolkit is offered an intelligent environment for storing knowledge about programs and performing reasoning on it.