Run-time monitoring (and perhaps manipulation) tools, essential for reverse engineering of dynamic behavior, are often difficult to build fromscratch. This presents a barrier for prototyping new analyses, and for building customized tools specific for single projects. To alleviate this problem, we present an architecture for easing the effort needed to build new monitoring tools that is based on the use of scripting languages for prototype monitors.
This architecture is presented in a prototype design and implementation of introspection and manipulation of CORBA-based applications. Our framework implementation is being accomplished by tying a new CORBA dynamic access feature known as Portable Interceptors with an existing very high level programming language, Tcl/Tk.