Reverse Engineering - Source Code

Source Code

A number of UML tools refer to the process of importing and analysing source code to generate UML diagrams as "reverse engineering". See List of UML tools.

Although UML is one approach to providing "reverse engineering" more recent advances in international standards activities have resulted in the development of the Knowledge Discovery Metamodel (KDM). This standard delivers an ontology for the intermediate (or abstracted) representation of programming language constructs and their interrelationships. An Object Management Group Standard (on its way to becoming an ISO standard as well), KDM has started to take hold in industry with the development of tools and analysis environments which can deliver the extraction and analysis of source, binary, and byte code. For source code analysis, KDM's granular standards' architecture enables the extraction of software system flows (data, control, & call maps), architectures, and business layer knowledge (rules, terms, process). The standard enables the use of a common data format (XMI) enabling the correlation of the various layers of system knowledge for either detailed analysis (e.g. root cause, impact) or derived analysis (e.g. business process extraction). Although efforts to represent language constructs can be never-ending given the number of languages, the continuous evolution of software languages and the development of new languages, the standard does allow for the use of extensions to support the broad language set as well as evolution. KDM is compatible with UML, BPMN, RDF and other standards enabling migration into other environments and thus leverage system knowledge for efforts such as software system transformation and enterprise business layer analysis.