A technique for reverse engineering graphical user interfaces (GUIs) produced with Xtoolkit source code is presented. Two independent graphical representations are automatically generated to assist GUI programmers in the development, testing, maintenance, and reengineering of X-based GUI source code. This capability to generate both structural and behavioral views has the potential to provide major improvements in the comprehensibility of X source code. Whereas generating widget instance trees to describe the structure of an X interface is common, the automatic generation of dialogue state diagrams to describe the behavior of an X interface is unique to our technique. The intent of this paper is to provide insight into the functional details of our automated reverse engineering process for the benefit of other reverse engineering researchers and programming tool developers.
Reverse Engineering User Interfaces for Interactive Database Conceptual Analysis
