In this paper, the class relationship flow model, consisting of inheritance, association, and aggregation flows, has been proposed to analyze class libraries. With respect to these flows, each member within a class is associated with an operation to represent whether its status is defined or used. The concealed dependencies propagated along class relationships can be represented as a sequence of flow operations along a flow path. By representing a program as a class relationship graph, the flow analysis can be reduced to the graph reachability problem.
The interpretation of OO features can vary with program constructs in different languages, such as inheritance rules and object representation. Although Java programs were used for demonstration purposes in this paper, this flow model can be tailored to fit specific OO languages with minor modification for the interpretation of OO features. In addition, this flow model can give a user the ability to interpret behavior evolution, message passing, and object encapsulation in programs as sequences of flow operations. These operation sequences could be applied in various fields of OO software engineering, such as program understanding, anomaly detection, complexity measurement, and program testing.
Currently, we are improving the efficiency of the flow computation algorithms for the whole set of classes in a program. In the future, we plan to develop testing and mainte-nance tools based on this model, and plan to embed them within an integrated visual-pro-gramming environment [33].
Fig. 21. The CRG of Program IV.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank the referees, whose comments helped to improve the overall presentation. This research was sponsored by the MOEA and supported by the Insti-tute for Information Industry, Taiwan, R.O.C.
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Feng-Jian Wang (¤ý¤ý¤ý¤ý¤ýÂ×Â×Â×Â×Â×°í°í°í°í°í) graduated from National Tai-wan University, Taipei, TaiTai-wan, R.O.C. in 1980. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degree in E.E.C.S. from Northwestern University, U.S.A., in 1986 and 1988. He is currently a Professor in the De-partment of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Na-tional Chiao Tung University. His interests include Software Engineering, Compiler, Object-Oriented Techniques, and Distrib-uted System Software and Internet.
Jiun-Liang Chen (³¯³¯³¯³¯³¯«T«T«T«T«T¨}¨}¨}¨}¨}) was born in Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.
C., in 1969. He received his B.S. degree in Computer Science &
Information Engineering from National Chiao Tung University, R.
O.C., in 1992, and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science & Informa-tion Engineering from NaInforma-tional Chiao Tung University, R.O.C., in 1998. He has been a student member of ACM, IEEE, USENIX, and R.O.C. OOTSIG since 1994. His research interests include object-oriented programming, program analysis, distributed systems, soft-ware testing, and softsoft-ware maintenance.