October 4, 2022 - 5:00 pm CEST

Virtual Meetup – Kevin Lano

Abstract

The porting or translation of software applications from one programming language to another is a common requirement of organisations that utilise software, and the increasing number and diversity of programming languages make this capability as relevant today as in previous decades.

Several approaches have been used to address this challenge, including machine learning and the manual definition of explicit translation rules, however, the accuracy of these approaches remains unsatisfactory. In this talk, a new approach to program translation is described using model-driven engineering (MDE) techniques: reverse-engineering source programs into specifications in the UML and OCL formalisms, and then forward-engineering the specifications to the required target language. This approach can provide assurance of semantic preservation, and additionally has the advantage of extracting specifications of software from code. The approach is evaluated based on a dataset of real program examples, including industrial cases.

Biography

Dr Lano has been involved in the field of software languages for over 30 years. He devised the Z++ extension of Z, and worked on the semantics of UML, OCL and model transformation languages. He has also been involved in software reverse-engineering, re-engineering and verification research. He leads a research team of 3 RAs and 5 PhD students at King’s College.

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