Accession Number:

ADA278639

Title:

An Environment for Visualization, Reliability, & Knowledge Acquisition in Equational Programming

Descriptive Note:

Final rept. 1 Aug 1990-31 Aug 1993

Corporate Author:

PENNSYLVANIA UNIV PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE

Personal Author(s):

• Prywes, Noah

Report Date:

1993-04-01

Pagination or Media Count:

169.0

Abstract:

We investigated the concept of a visual software environment which facilitates man-machine cooperation during software development. The focus is on oracle operations performed by a human user during the man-machine cooperation. In the environment, graphics and equations are combined to enhance software understanding that is essential in software development. The environment consists of the following components 1 visual programming an icon-based graph editor is used for composing an array graph of an equational language program, for interactive syntax analysis, and for consistency checking of the array graph and equations 2 compilation an equational language program is statically checked in accordance with its semantics during compilation 3 equational visual testing test adequacy criteria are defined for the equational visual testing the testing process becomes simple and intuitive oracle operations such as path selection, path examination, finding test input values, monitoring execution, and evaluation are facilitated 4 verification equational reasoning is combined with graphical representation of programs and, 5 knowledge acquisition expertise in old legacy code in procedural language such as algorithms and methods is transferred to rules of knowledge bases via equations.

Descriptors:

• *SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
• *MAN COMPUTER INTERFACE
• SEMANTICS
• SYNTAX
• COMPUTER OPERATORS
• RELIABILITY
• DATA ACQUISITION

Subject Categories:

• Computer Programming and Software

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE