by Shihong Huang

The 8th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE 2001) was held from Oct. 2-5 in Stuttgart, Germany. Although recent events reduced attendance somewhat compared to previous years, the conference was a success. WCRE brings together researchers active in the esoteric area of software reverse engineering: examining existing code for the purposes of aiding program understanding and system evolution.

Reverse engineering is an emerging branch of software engineering that can aid systematic evolution by providing a software engineer with a better understanding of the subject system’s current design and overall structure. It directly supports the essence of program understanding: identifying artifacts, discovering relationships, and generating abstractions. There is one event specifically devoted to reverse engineering research and practice: the Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE).

From the conference Web site:

The Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE) is the premier research conference on the theory and practice of recovering information from existing software and systems. WCRE explores innovative methods of extracting the many kinds of information that can be recovered from software, software engineering documents, and systems artifacts, and to examine innovative ways of using this information in system renovation and program understanding.

WCRE 2001 was held Oct. 2-5 in Stuttgart, Germany. The themes covered by WCRE 2001 were quite broad, but all focus on aspects of reverse engineering. Some of the topics that were discussed included:

• Experience reports (successes and failures) on reverse engineering or reengineering efforts
• Software visualization
• Interoperability issues of reverse engineering tools
• Wrapping and interfacing legacy systems
• Data reverse engineering cost benefit analyses
• Domain modeling to support reverse engineering
• Reengineering economics

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Conference Structure

WCRE 2001 was the eighth conference in the series, and the second one I have attended; my first WCRE was in Atlanta in 1999. WCRE has an enviable tradition o f having excellent of papers, vigorous and in-depth discussions, and interesting activities. This year's event was no different -- except that we also got to visit the Volksfest!

Again from the conference Web site:

WCRE is truly a working conference, where discussion is emphasized. By tradition, each paper presentation has a strict 20 minute limit. Following each group of papers on a given topic, there is serious and in-depth discussion of the topic area, the work described in the presentations, and the implications for future research. WCRE attendees are not passive observers; we are active participants in discussing and shaping future directions of the reverse engineering and reengineering fields.

In addition to the main WCRE sessions, there were three workshops and two discussion forums that focused on different aspects of reverse engineering research. The three workshops were "Analysis, Slicing, and Transformation" (AST), "Data Reverse Engineering" (DRE), and "Decompilation Techniques" (Decomp). The two discussion forums were "Dynamic Analysis of System Behavior" and "Software Architecture Recovery and Modeling" (SWARM). With so many things going on over the four day period, it made for a very busy -- but very fulfilling -- conference.

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Comments and Photos

During the conference, Scott took a lot of pictures (as he usually does).  I think the photos give a glimpse into the activities at WCRE 2001, both professional and otherwise. Click on the thumbnail image to see the full-size picture.

The next WCRE 2002 will be held in Virginia. There are tentative plans for WCRE 2003 to be in Victoria, Canada. Plan ahead -- these will be great conferences!

	Ken Wong and I checking email during a break in the conference. (117KB)
	Coffee break time. The conference was held in one of the engineering buildings of the University of Stuttgart. (115KB)
	Rainer Koschke, the WCRE 2001 General Chair, demonstrating the cookoo clock. The clock was used to time speakers' presentations. (86KB)
	A wonderful dinner at a local restaurant. Conferences are not all work! (132KB)
	The Volksfest. (127KB)