Ublige Software and Robotics Corporation proposes to develop visual, software agents for automated code development -- particularly for large, complex software systems utilizing a language mixture. Advanced coding agent concepts will be evaluated on a variety of codes to determine the feasibility of building Intelligent FlowCode Agents (FTAs). Current FTAs are not intelligent and are limited to simple pattern matching and regular expression processing. Still, they are powerful enough to retrofit Object Oriented (OO) features onto non-OO languages - e.g. assembler - and they are orders of magnitude easier to create than textual wizard. or template code due to their visual nature. The main goal of Phase I is to demonstrate that this novel agent technology can do more than build and patch code. During Phase 1, advanced FTA concepts, including artificial intelligence, will be evaluated for building agents that can also "understand" code enough to accomplish cognitive-level functions on large distributed software systems. This will provide a new tool for testing and developing complex code in large, multi-language systems. An optional task will lnitiate testing of prototype FTAs on an existing BMC3 software comptonent as part of pre-Phase II developmental testing. Software engineering and reengineering based on this approach could be used in commercial and military systems to induce reuse and heighten the quality of existing software. Software technology is used in a large number of critical systems and the importance of having maintainable high-quality software is increasing. Due to US&R's strategy to market FlowCoder in late 1997, and the fact that specialized FTA's will form several market niches. rapid commercialization of products based on this technology is likely.
Keywords: Software, Visual Programming, Reengineering, Flowcode, Reuse, Agents, Visual Coding, Flowcharts
