Renewtek - Semantic Designs

Semantic Designs

Overview

Semantic Designs mission is to enable customers and their partners to produce and maintain timely, robust and economical software by providing world-class software engineering tools that use deep problem knowledge and deliver high degrees ofe automation.

The company was founded in 1995 to develop the Design Maintenance System (DMS). Initial R & D funding came from a 33 year $1.9M grant from the Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Advanced Technology Program. Component-Based Software initiative.

Software language semantics represent a greatly underutilized resource and are mostly exploited for compilation. Language semantics, however, also create opportunities for tools that manipulate programs as data to perform a wide range of engineering tasks. DMS provides infrastructure for encoding semantics and implementing these tools flexibly across the spectrum of programming languages, including multiple dialects of the same base language. The deep, embedded knowledge of software semantics enables the complex analysis needed to correctly implement deductions and transformations, and the DMS tool-building infrastructure flexibly supports the rapid construction of complex tools by allowing implementation in terms of source language elements. DMS unlocks the latent potential for reliably implementing massive regular change to software systems.

At present, DMS partially implements a technical vision of a 21st-century software development paradigm where development tools will record the software specification, how the software implements the specification, and why it works correctly. Such tools would help a designer to understand the design, carry it to implementation, and modify the design to create new code, all at a significant reduction in software maintenance cost and cycle time.

Semantic Designs encodes the semantics of software languages, and within the same framework represents programs written in those languages. Then, by using state of the art transformation technology and program attribute definition and computation, Semantic Deisgns generates custom tools for the analysis, instrumentation, documentation, re-engineering, or migration of existing systems. They also generate new software from higher level specifications. Because the framework is multi-lingual, our partners tools can handle complex applications implemented in multiple languages. Semantic Designs have engineered their infrastructure for high performance, so very large software systems can be manipulated.

Value Proposition

Reliability
Mechanical analysis and transformation is more tractable and less error-prone than manual methods.
Scalability
System size is no longer a barrier to change.
Customizability
Transformation and analysis rules may be changed and adapted. Custom analysis are enabled.
Transparency
Changes are viewed in terms of rules (specifications) instead of a mass of code modifications.
Industrial capability
DMS-based tools can handle design languages (like UML or Verilog), target programming languages (C++, Java, COBOL), preprocessor languages, and scripting languages, all within the same system.
Economy of scale
Manual costs are geometric in organization size. Using automated tools has linear costs in code size.
Best use of labor
Semantic Designs can provide tools and services for specific tasks, but you may also purchase the tool set, empowering your engineers over your entire life cycle and enabling fully in-house capability.
Reduced cost per task
Since a large portion of tool costs are absorbed in the DMS infrastructure, particular changes or analysis impose only incremental cost. Leveraged investments in infrastructure reduce overall cost.
Lower life cycle costs
The generality of DMS allows it to be used across all lifecycle phases, leveraging your engineering investment.