Cobol program analyser and workbench - phase 1 : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Date
1985
DOI
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Massey University
Rights
The Author
Abstract
This dissertation addresses a number of important software maintenance problems which fall within the framework of software management and software engineering. Compiling techniques were used to present in a standard form the structure of the COBOL program PROCEDURE DIVISION; as well as providing a framework for some complexity measures of a given COBOL program. The latter can give some measure of the ease of software modification during the software maintenance phase. The purpose of the project of which this thesis is a part is to build up a database which will completely specify a COBOL program and enable it to be analysed in various ways related to maintenance, enhancement and other tasks. A COBOL program information system ( M.JCAS) has been designed for use by the applications programmer, to acquire the information about a COBOL program ( e.g. complexity measures, control flow analysis ) by analysing the structure of the COBOL program. Various software methods such as structured programming, structured design, top-down design and bottom-up program testing were used throughout the MJCAS system development process. The finite-state machine concept was used to construct a COBOL lexical scanner. The COBOL programming syntax was parsed by the top-down recursive-descent method. The COBOL program was reformatted according to a coding standard to show the structure of the COBOL program. Many complexity measures are mentioned in this thesis. A combination complexity measure method and guidelines are suggested. A COBOL program complexity factor is proposed. In general, the program complexity measure could apply to other programming languages.
Description
Keywords
COBOL (Computer program language)
Citation