Reverse engineering meets data analysis

We demonstrate how the data management techniques known as On-Line Analytical Processing, or OLAP, can be used to enhance the sophistication and range of software reverse engineering tools. This is the first comprehensive examination of the similarities and differences in these tasks both in how OLAP techniques meet (or fail to meet) the needs of reverse engineering and in how reverse engineering can be recast using data analysis. To permit the seamless integration of these technologies, we extend a multidimensional data model to manage dynamically changing dimensions (over which data can be aggregated). We use a case study of the Apache Web server to show how our solutions permit an integrated view of data, ranging from low level program analysis information to abstract, aggregate information. These high-level abstractions may be provided either by humans (perhaps using a visualization tool) or directly from reverse engineering tools or data mining techniques.