increase the flexibility and interaction with other applications, the developed application is able to export the generated
diagrams to multiple formats allowing its visualization by diverse tools.
Java
easy access to the code that is being imple-
mented in the program. The problem starts to
get more complicated when an application is in
a remote environment and does not produce
any output in the console or in a Log file
(registration of transactions), mainly in the case
of computer software of considerable size. Due
to the increasing size and complexity of soft-
ware applications the understanding of their
structure and behaviour has become more and
more important. Proper specification and de-
sign activities are known to be indispensable
for producing understandable software. The re-
verse engineering of dynamic behaviour of a
program is still a topic of on-going research.
However, there are allready several types of
diagrams which allow us to visualize the se-
quence of communication between objects of a
Management and Technology School (ESTIG) of the Polytechnic
Institute of Beja (PORTUGAL) (e-mail: nunofort@ gmail.com).
[5]. In UML2 [13] specification there is a type
of diagram for this purpose which is called
Sequence Diagram
mainly the sequence of messages between ob-
jects (call and return method events). This type
of diagrams can be very useful in analysis of
object-oriented computer applications. Because
allow us to know many informations about
what the application does throughout its im-
plementation (In the course of its execution).
They therefore are called behaviour diagrams.
One of the issues to be considered when trying
to develop a tool for the generation of this type
of diagram is, if there is some kind of support
for the language through an API (Application
Program Interface
implementation of a program, in order to build
the Sequence Diagram. Java
Sun Microsystems [11] in 1991, with the main
characteristic of creating applications which
can run in any platform or Operating Sys-
tem, by a Java
which is a binary language the virtual machine
will understand, thus to interpret or compile
to native code, in order to run nativily by the
operating system. So, for the purpose of cre-
ating Sequence Diagrams, the Java
to obtain such information as the sequence of