Some areas are scrambling to figure out how to address the situation, Molter admits. The department needs a data base of information with a baseline of systems, including all hardware and software technical environments. An inventory of all the software in the department has yet to be completed, Molter notes, estimating that the total will be in excess of 1 billion lines of code, all of which must be checked. This type of inspection will redirect people who would have been developing new systems and adding features, Molter notes. The department will have to divert personnel for the next three years to address the problem.
Tools are available to semi-automate the process of software correction.
But the military market has only a small subset of the tools available to the commercial market. Two of the more popular commercial tools are slicers and parsers. A parser reads code, extracts variables and assignment statements from it and then converts the code into a form compilers can work with. A parser separates equal signs, multiplication and logic statements. This creates a code that is easier to examine, Backman states.