Behavioral similarity matching using concrete source code templates in logic queries

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Programming in Java

et al. 2011

Self Cite

Program queries can answer important software engineering questions that range from "which expressions are cast to this type?" over "does my program attempt to read from a closed file?" to "does my code follow the prescribed design?". In this paper, we present a comprehensive tool suite for querying Java programs. It consists of the logic program query language SOUL, the CAVA library of predicates for quantifying over an Eclipse workspace and the Eclipse plugin BARISTA for launching queries and inspecting their results. BARISTA allows other Eclipse plugins to peruse program query results which is facilitated by the symbiosis of SOUL with Java -setting SOUL apart from other program query languages. This symbiosis enables the CAVA library to forego the predominant transcription to logic facts of the queried program. Instead, the library queries the actual AST nodes used by Eclipse itself, making it trivial for any Eclipse plugin to find the AST nodes that correspond to a query result. Moreover, such plugins do not have to worry about having queried stale program information. We illustrate the extensibility of our suite by implementing a tool for co-evolving source code and annotations using program queries.

Section: H2: Exploiting Solutions To Program Queriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Features That Facilitate Specifying Program Queriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The SOUL tool suite for querying programs in symbiosis with Eclipse

Roover

Noguera

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Programming in Java

et al. 2011

Self Cite

“…Example-driven matching of code templates [4], [5] is a unique feature of SOUL that facilitates specifying program queries. It enables exemplifying source code characteristics through familiar template terms rather than specifying them through convoluted logic conditions.…”

Section: Domain-specific Unification and Template Queriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Program querying with a SOUL: The BARISTA tool suite

Noguera

Roover

2011 27th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM)

et al. 2011

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Abstract-Extracting information from the source code of a program is an important step in the way to program understanding, manipulation, development and maintenance. To this end, logic-based query languages provide a declarative manner in which to identify program elements of interest. In this paper we present BARISTA, a tool-suite for querying Java programs based on the Smalltalk Open Unification Language (SOUL). BARISTA offers programmers an advanced IDE to write queries and navigate their results. Tool builders can benefit from SOUL querying facilities by exploiting the on demand code querying and query scheduling services offered by BARISTA. I. INTRODUCTIONProgram queries identify program elements that exhibit characteristics of interest. Logic formulas can be used as expressive and descriptive specifications of these characteristics. This merely requires reifying the program under investigation such that logic variables can range over its elements. Executing a proof procedure will then establish whether program elements exhibit the characteristics specified in a formula. This logic-based approach to program querying is widespread in literature (usually based on Prolog [6] or Datalog [3]). We will focus on querying Java programs using the latest incarnation of SOUL [8], one of the earliest logic program query languages that is still under active development.Tool builders that require gathering information on the structure and behaviour of a system, can benefit from advanced program query facilities. Consider implementing a tool for a Java IDE that highlights repeated string concatenations where a StringBuilder would be more appropriate. Usually, this entails telling the IDE to mark some of its AST nodes. We therefore have to find those AST nodes that correspond to repeated string concatenations. Invoking the search API of the IDE is, on one hand cumbersome since the characteristics of the sough pattern must be described imperatively and on the other, only a feasible option in case the sought after AST nodes are characterized behaviorally. However, existing search APIs do not support control flow and data flow characteristics required to effectively track the values being concatenated across the execution of the application. Employing a logicbased query language would remedy the first shortcoming of IDE's search APIs, but provide no help regarding the second one. Furthermore, since most logic-based program query approaches represent the program's source code as a set of terms, it is up to the tool developer to translate the results of the query back to AST nodes for further processing.

“…Further development of the language has resulted in extensions to the language such as template queries [1] and the implementation of libraries of predicates to support reasoning over other programming languages such as Java, C(++) and Cobol.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experiments with pro-active declarative meta-programming

Gómez

Proceedings of the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies

Gybels

et al. 2009

Self Cite

Program querying has become a valuable asset in the programmer's toolbox. Using dedicated querying languages, developers can reason about their source code in order to find errors, refactoring opportunities and so on. Within Smalltalk, the SOUL language has been proposed as one such language that offers a declarative and expressive means to query the source code of object-oriented programs.Ever since its inception, SOUL has been used as the underlying technique for a number of academic software engineering tools. Despite its success, one of the problems of SOUL is that, due to its backward chained implementation, it is less suited as a basis for such pro-active software tools. Using SOUL, a developer has to launch the queries over the system manually, rather than automatically receiving feedback whenever the underlying source code is changed. In this paper we present PARACHUT, an alternative logic query language that is based on forward chaining and temporal logic and that allows developers to express queries over the change history of the system. Furthermore, PARACHUT's data-driven nature makes it possible to provide instant feedback to developers when the source code is changed, thus providing better support for pro-active software tools.[Copyright notice will appear here once 'preprint' option is removed.]