A Knowledge-Based System for Software Maintenance

A description of an Intelligent, Knowledge-Based maintenance tool, being developed by the Centre for Software Maintenance at the University of Durham is described. The tool is intended to help reduce the amount of time spent on analysing code. Code analysis is performed when a programmer is familiarising himself with a piece of code, and when the eects of a proposed modication of the code is being assessed. 1 The Problem There has been much research in recent years on the problems of program and system development, but very little work has been done on the problems of maintaining developed programs. The early promises of researchers in formal methods and structured programming, that the maintenance problem would simply disappear as their methods are developed and applied, have not been realised for several fundamental reasons: There exists a large quantity of what might be termed as geriatric code. This code has often been heavily modied to make it perform many more functions than was originally intended. This code represents a considerable investment on the part of the owner and cannot therefor