Comprehending a complex, distributed, object-oriented software system: a report from the field

Comprehending complex, distributed, object-oriented software systems is a difficult task which must be approached in a formal disciplined manner if it is to be solved at all. The authors have developed a formal tool supported approach using relational databases to model both the requirement specification and the system implementation of a very large commercial application system. The approach combines forward and reverse engineering link the implementation to the specification, thereby providing a basis for traceability between system artifacts and requirements. The result is a partial comprehension adequate for system maintenance.