Measurements

In our grammar-centric approach, the size of generated tool support is directly related to the size of the grammar. In the case of COBOL, the grammar contains at the moment circa 700 production rules; it includes the embedded languages CICS [31] and SQL [32]. For every production rule we generate at least one generic transformation rule, one analysis rule and native syntax for all access functions for these generic rules. Including these generated rules, we get circa 1100 production rules. The number of generated rewrite rules is in this case approximately 1300.

For the unparser we generate 700 production rules for additional syntax (needed by the unparser) and 700 rewrite rules. Usually, only a few of these generated rules have to be redefined by hand in order to satisfy specific formatting requirements.

The COBOL programs that we transform have at the moment sizes between small (100 LOC) and medium (5-10 KLOC). A transformation that matches 350 times in a 5000 LOC program takes less than a minute to transform.