Originally doing business as Ublige Software and Robotics Corporation, FlowLynx, Inc. works to develop visual, software agents for automated code engineering that would maximize labor efficiency. The company has bundled these agents into a software program, called Visual FlowCoderTM, which it sells commercially. Visual FlowCoder has been used by a number of high-profile firms, including Martin Marietta and Teledyne-Brown. FlowLynx, Inc. has developed software agents that can automate flowcharting of software programs. An agent is a small program dedicated to executing some specific task. Agent-related components developed under BMDO SBIR work include flow and analysis tools, programming language translation tools, Web flowcharting tools, a page viewer client, a Web server-based code flowcharting engine, extensible markup language (XML) mapping tools, and client-server linkage to Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) application program interfaces and Sun Microsystemâs Remote Method Invocation (RMI) protocol. These agents were incorporated into FlowLynxâs Visual FlowCoderTM software, a program that can graphically map the flow of software code across large systems. Procedures, functions, and other routines are flowcharted, or "flowcoded," which is to say they are placed in a visual format based on the software's algorithmic flow. This allows engineers and programmers to visually eyeball the flow of their programs, making code development, maintenance, bug-fixing, integration, documentation or re-engineering projects easier. A specialized language, called the flowcode, encapsulates other process languages (Ada, C, C++, Cobol, Java) allowing for a new layer of abstraction and visualization. This system is that it is the first to integrate many different parts for software analysis into one package. Engineering analysis on a system-wide scale is also more manageable. FlowLynx estimates that use of this software can cut the time of executing software engineering projects by 50 percent or more. Also, this code generates visual documentation of the code for documentation purpos
