A structured demonstration of five program comprehension tools: lessons learnt

The purpose of the article is to report on a structured demonstration for comparing program comprehension tools. Five teams of program comprehension tool designers applied their tools to a set of maintenance tasks on a common subject system. By applying a variety of reverse engineering techniques to a predefined set of tasks, the tools can be compared using a common playing field. A secondary topic of discussion will address the development of "guinea pig" systems and how to use them in a structured demonstration for evaluating software tools.