Programming Research Group  -  University of Amsterdam  -  TR P9807 


       An Architecture for Automated Software Maintenance

                         Alex  Sellink
                         Chris Verhoef


We developed an  assembly  line  to  implement  certain  specific
changes  in  a broking system written in COBOL with embedded SQL.
The changes were proposed by the maintenance team of the  system.
Using  our  archtecture,  it  took  a  few hours to implement the
conditional transformations from the code  examples  we  obtained
from  the  maintenance  team.   Then we could carry out the tasks
completely automated.  We report on  the  transformations,  their
implementation and the architecture we used.  It is the intention
of the company that owns the COBOL/SQL to use our archtecture for
similar  tasks.   This study was carried out in order to give the
company that owns the code an indication of the effort it  takes,
the  development  process  of  the components that carry out such
tasks, and the process to change software using our architecture.