Instance pointcuts for program comprehension

Abstract

The dynamic behavior of programs generally cannot be fully observed via the source code, but dynamic tools, e.g. debuggers, have to be used. Comprehending dynamic behavior entails observing object interactions during runtime. The class structure is not always sufficient to understand these interactions since objects of the same type can be used in various places, just as objects of different types can be used in similar places. Our novel concept, instance pointcuts, groups objects based on the events they participate in, introducing a flexible way of creating object categories; a category contains objects that are used in the specified way. This paper proposes an application of instance pointcuts to the program comprehension domain. We illustrate the usefulness of our approach through three comprehension scenarios.

Scopeo: an Object-Centric Debugging Approach for Exploring Object-Oriented Programs

“…Declarative breakpoints [6] express, for a group of particular objects, the criteria for interrupting the execution. Instance Pointcuts [7] express, for a particular object method or attribute, a sequence of conditions to meet to suspend the execution. Object Miners [1] track and collect objects produced by (sub) expressions selected from the source code.…”

Non-instrusive instance level software composition

“…Complex software systems are difficult to understand because they consist of many elements with complicated dependencies [BH13]. A fac-tor further complicating the comprehensibility is the dynamicity of execution semantics: In object-oriented programming languages, the dynamic type of the receiver object determines which implementation of the called method will be executed.…”