Extracting and verifying coordination models from source code

Extracting and verifying coordination models from source code (preprint)
N. F. Rodrigues and L. S. Barbosa. Proc. of FLOSS-FM/OpenCert Joint International Workshop at OOS'08, A. Cerone and P. Breuer et al (eds), OOS'08, Milan, 2008.

Abstract Current software development relies increasingly on non-trivial coordination logic for combining autonomous services often running on different platforms. As a rule, however, in typical non-trivial software systems, such a coordination layer is strongly weaved within the application at source code level. Therefore, its precise identification becomes a major methodological (and technical) problem which cannot be overestimated along any program understanding or refactoring process. Open access to source code, as granted in OSS certification, provides an opportunity for the development of methods and technologies to extract, from source code, the relevant coordination information. This paper is a step in this direction, combining a number of program analysis techniques to automatically recover coordination information from legacy code. Such information is then expressed as a model in Orc, a general purpose orchestration language.