The aim of this paper is to provide a unified mathematical framework for program slicing which places all slicing work, for sequential programs, on a sound theoretical foundation. The main advantage to a mathematical approach is that it is not tied to a particular representation. In fact the mathematics provides a sound basis for any particular representation. We use the WSL (Wide Spectrum Language) program transformation theory as our framework. Within this framework we define a new semantic relation, semi-refinement which lies between semantic equivalence and semantic refinement. Combining this semantic relation, a syntactic relation (called reduction) and WSL’s remove statement, we can give mathematical definitions for backwards slicing, conditioned slicing, static and dynamic slicing and semantic slicing as program transformations in the WSL transformation theory. A novel technique of “encoding ” operational semantics within a denotational semantics allows the framework to handle “operational slicing”. The theory also enables the concept of slicing to be applied to nondeterministic programs. These transformations are implemented in the industry-strength FermaT transformation system.

This is an experience report on automated mass maintenance of a large Cobol software portfolio. A company in the financial services and insurance industry upgraded their database system to a new version, affecting their entire software portfolio. The database system was accessed by the portfolio of 45 systems, totalling nearly 3000 programs and covering over 4 million lines of Cobol code. We upgraded the programs to the new database version using several automatic tools, and we performed an automated analysis supporting further manual modifications by the system experts. The automatic tools were built using a combination of lexical and syntactic technology, and they were deployed in a mass update factory to allow large-scale application to the software portfolio. The updated portfolio has been accepted and taken into production by the company, serving over 600 employees with the new database version. In this paper, we discuss the automated upgrade from problem statement to project costs. c ○ 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated mass maintenance of software assets

This document gives a brief practical oriented introduction to the FermaT Maintenance Environment (FME). It covers the installation and usage of the program via practical examples.