Data processing: software development – installation – and managem – Software program development tool – Translation of code
Reexamination Certificate
1999-08-18
2001-05-29
Powell, Mark R. (Department: 2122)
Data processing: software development, installation, and managem
Software program development tool
Translation of code
C717S152000, C717S152000, C717S152000, C717S152000, C717S152000, C345S182000, C345S440000, C709S241000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06240549
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
This invention is directed to a method and a system for displaying information of a program under development in a development environment of object oriented programming and, more particularly, to such a method and a system that enable to display only particular classes and methods related to each other.
2. Prior Art
In a conventional class browser, a list of classes, a list of member variables or a list of methods for each class may be displayed. The common variety of displaying form is that uses a tree structure or a list box. Examples of class browsers are shown in
FIGS. 1 and 2
.
In
FIG. 1
, a window
11
is shown to display classes as well as their member variables and methods (member functions) in the form of a tree structure along with icons representing their respective attributes (public/protected/private). Designating a given member variable
12
, “m_dwCents”, as shown by the reversely highlighted characters, a portion of a source code corresponding thereto may be displayed in a window
13
.
In another example shown in
FIG. 2
, classes may be displayed in a hierarchical manner. In a window
24
, there is shown a “project” to be displayed. In a window
23
, there is displayed a list of classes at the first hierarchical level of this project. In a window
20
, classes may be displayed in a tree structure. The classes being displayed in the window
20
include those classes (
21
) at the first hierarchical level, and other classes (
22
) at the second hierarchical level within the designated class “LSsNode”.
While such displaying functions are more efficient than directly observing a source code, in an actual application where the number of classes or methods is enormously increased, they have a difficulty to find out a particular member variable or a method. In view of such a problem, Visual Basic 5 (VB) or SNIFF has implemented a function for classifying members based on their attributes. For example, VB displays member variables after classifying them into those relating to display, size and the like, whereas SNIFF may perform a classification according to attributes such as public/protected/private in C++. However, with provision of such a classification function alone, there is no way to furnish an essential solution to find out necessary information from an enormous amount of program information.
Further, as another function for displaying program information, there is a call graph. This is used for displaying call relations between methods or member variables as a directed graph. Its example is shown in FIG.
3
. In this call graph, classes are represented as nodes (
31
to
33
) , whereas calls are represented by edges between nodes. A name provided on an edge identifies a called class or a member variable.
While such a graph is useful for a small scaled application, it is not adapted for a large scaled application. This is because, in such a large scaled application, many methods or member variables are defined for each class and, thus, the number of nodes and edges of the graph is explosively increased.
As described above, when program information of a large scaled application under development is to be displayed, there has been a fundamental problem that a large amount of information is presented.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to display necessary program information sorted out in a simple manner while a large scaled program is being developed.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides a method or a system for analyzing and displaying program information in an environment where execution management of a program can be made at a source level and call relations can be extracted from a call stack, characterized by: providing a collaboration repository for storing call relations of methods between classes related as collaboration; moving said call relations of the methods from said call stack to said collaboration repository; and displaying the methods from said collaboration repository in association with the collaboration.
Also, the present invention is characterized by editing collaboration relations with respect to said collaboration repository.
Said displaying of the methods includes displaying collaboration relations in a matrix form or a call graph for each collaboration relation.
Besides, this invention is directed to a recording medium for storing a program implemented for analyzing and displaying program information such that said program is executable to carry out a machine-effected step of displaying methods from a collaboration repository in association with collaboration.
With this invention, it is possible to collect information of collaboration relations in a simple manner and yet to edit/display the collected collaboration, thereby enabling to accurately grasp information of a large scaled program during its development.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5481712 (1996-01-01), Silver et al.
patent: 5500881 (1996-03-01), Levin et al.
patent: 5592600 (1997-01-01), De Pauw et al.
patent: 5740440 (1998-04-01), West
patent: 5740444 (1998-04-01), Frid-Nielsen
patent: 5781900 (1998-07-01), Shoji et al.
Linos, “Poly CARE: A Tool for Re-engineering Multi-language Program Integrations”, IEEE, pp. 338-341, Nov. 1995.*
Linos et al., “CARE: An Environment for Understanding and Re-engineering C Programs”, IEEE, pp. 130-139, Sep. 1993.
Hamada Seiji
Kikuchi Michio
Nakamura Yuichi
Ohkawa Masahiro
August Casey P.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Powell Mark R.
Scully Scott Murphy & Presser
Vo Ted T.
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