Acat : an automated tool to determine the type of coupling exhibited by ada programs
John Robert Denton · Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research · 1990
Computer programs that make extensive use of global, or common, variables are among the most difficult and expensive programs to maintain. Two or more modules within a computer program that share a common variable are said to be commonly coupled. Modifying or deleting a commonly coupled module may produce a ripple effect throughout a program with unpredictable results. The Automated Coupling Analysis Tool (ACAT) was developed to aid in the maintenance of Ada programs by identifying the modules that use common variables. ACAT uses object and module information provided by the VAX Source Code Analyzer ( SCA) tool to determine module coupling. This paper describes how ACAT works, and provides examples of how ACAT may be used to determine unit coupling in Ada programs. A review of coupling is provided as an introduction, and a description of SCA and the VAX Language sensitive Editor is supplied in the appendix.