MOOSE - a task-driven program comprehension environment

Many tools have been developed to derive abstract representations from existing source code. Yet, most of these tools provide only little help in providing an encompassing picture of the system under examination. Graphical visualization techniques derived from reverse engineered source code have long been recognized for their impact on improving the comprehensibility of software systems and their source code. In this paper, we present a task-oriented approach to software comprehension by introducing our MOOSE (Montreal Object-Oriented Slicing Environment) environment that provides a task-driven wizard approach that supports a cognitive comprehension model combined with reverse engineering techniques, algorithmic and visualization support. We close our discussion with a brief overview of typical software comprehension tasks and how the MOOSE environment will benefit users during these comprehension tasks.