System for inspection and quality assurance of software - A knowledge-based experiment with code understanding

This paper describes a knowledge-based prototype that inspects and quality-assures software components. The prototype model, which offers a singular representation of these components, is used to automate both the mechanical and nonmechanical activities in the quality assurance (QA) process. It is shown that the prototype, in addition to automating the QA process, provides a novel approach to understanding code. These approaches are compared with recent approaches to code understanding. The paper also presents the results of an experiment with several classes of nonsyntactic bugs. It is argued that a structured environment, as facilitated by this unique architecture, along with software development standards used in the QA process, is essential for meaningful analysis of code. 8 refs