Data-centered program understanding

Software maintainers use a variety of techniques and representations for understanding programs. Most of these representations first focus on the control structure of a program such as call graphs, control flow graphs and paths. We propose a new approach for program understanding that is data-centered-it first focuses on data and data relationships. We have experimented on both small and large Cobol programs from industry to determine if our methods are useful for program understanding and software maintenance. We have developed DPUTE (Data-centered Program Understanding Tool Environment) that is currently being evaluated and enhanced by our industrial partners.<>