Panorama: A Multi-language Software Information Prospecting Facility

This paper concerns the development of both theoretical and operational frameworks, called Panorama, for comprehending large scale, multi-lingual software systems. The foundation to the system is the development and deployment of instrumentation agents, which have the ability to burrow through the software at various levels of depth—both statically and dynamically and treating the software as Black box and/or White box—in order to collect valuable information. In our past research (Gallagher and Lakshmi Narasimhan in, IEEE Trans Softw Engg 23(8):473–484, 1997), we have developed both a theoretical framework and an implementation of a core set of instrumentation statements in order to optimize data generation for testability purposes. This framework is distributed and applicable to assembly language, procedural and OO paradigms, and combinations thereof. This basic framework has been augmented with additional theoretical foundation and instrumentation procedures so that processes for software visualization and comprehension can be achieved. The instrumentation is completely handled by a distributed agent-based system, which is also capable of detecting the underlying programming languages and capturing all book-keeping information needed for various application requirements. It is envisaged that robust optimization procedures are required (as was shown before for testability purposes) for dynamic system composition. The system has the capability for self-cataloguing and querying toward the above-mentioned purposes, in addition to providing view-tailoring and view maintenance for specific application domains. The Panorama system can be mounted over a Cloud environment also.