Ada semantic interface specification (ASIS) frequently asked questions
Currie Colket, Clyde G. Roby · ACM SIGAda Ada Letters · 1997
Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS) Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat is ASIS?The Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS) is an interface between an Ada environment as defined by ISOKEC 8652 (the Ada 95 Reference Manual) and any tool requiring information from this environment.An Ada environment includes valuable semantic and syntactic information.ASIS is an open and published callable interface which gives CASE tool and application developers access to this information.ASIS has been designed to be independent of underlying Ada environment implementations, thus supporting portability of software engineering tools while relieving tool developers from having to understand the complexities of an Ada environment's proprietary internal representation. What type of Tools can be developed with ASIS?Examples of tools that benefit from the ASIS interface include: code restructuring tools, code browsing and navigation tools, coding style and standards compliance tools, cross-reference tools, data flow analysis tools, dependency tree analysis tools, design tools, document generation tools, invocation (call) tree analysis tools, language-sensitive editing and pretty-printing tools, language translation tools, quality assessment tools, reverse engineering tools, re-engineering tools, safety and security compliance tools, static correctness verifiers, tasking analysis tools, test-case generation and coverage analysis tools, and usage, quality, and complexity metrics tools.In fact most of these have already been developed using the ASIS interfaces by people in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. How would a CASE Tool use ASIS?For example, ASIS can be used by a metrics tool to evaluate Ada application code.The symbolic name, type, and usage of each object declared can be obtained through the ASIS interface to support the requirements of the metrics tool.Use of the object can be identified by traversal of a logical semantic tree using the ASIS interfaces.Counts for the numbers of each desired occurrence can then be presented to users of the metrics tool.Examples of commercial tools which use ASIS include: Ada Analyzer by Litde Tree Consulting, Adamat by DRC, AdaQuest by GRC, AdaWise by Odyssey Research Associates, and ReEngineer by Loral Defense Systems. How can I learn more about ASIS?An ASIS home page on the World Wide Web contains all the latest information on ASIS.It also provides access to highlights of recent ASISWG/ASISRG meetings and several publicly available ASIS Tutorials.