From: Jeff Schilling <jeff.schilling@...1.com>
Date: 2002-03-29T01:46:51+09:00
Subject: RE: Prototyping in Ruby and UML-ish model extraction.

The smalltalk refactoring browser
http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/brant/Refactory/

uses a similar technique called method wrappers to devine type @ runtime for
refactored callers.

http://emw.inf.tu-dresden.de/de/pdai/Forschung/refactoring/refactoring_html/
node40.html discusses this a little bit.

Brant et al discuss the technique of method wrappers here:
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/189005.html

the idea sounds feasible.  Use reflection to annotate/wrap the methods with
a dynamic proxy.  Capture the info at runtime. Voila.  The devil is as they
say in the details.


-Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Kent Dahl [mailto:kentda@stud.ntnu.no]
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2002 2:51 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Prototyping in Ruby and UML-ish model extraction.


Hi.

I'm prototyping something in Ruby, and I was wondering how difficult it
would be to extract UML relation information from Ruby code directly.

Now, as RDoc and Ruby reflection go, getting classes, parents and
methods are no problem. However, since UML has a more statically typed
mindset wrt relation between classes and instance variables only spring
into existance when actual objects are created, I feel I'm left with a
class inheritance graph, but no real relation data.

So here is my idea: Hook into _everything_ for the newly created
classes, recording what arguments are passed to what objects, what is in
the instance variables at the exit of methods, and then run the
UnitTests or fire up some dummy data instances.

For instance, upon seeing that method "add" is called with both Student
objects and Employee objects, one could traverse up the inheritance tree
until we find the Person class which they both inherit from.

Similarly for instance variables. Keep tab of what kind of objects go
into them, and walk up the inheritance tree until the common ancestor is
found, effectively deducing the static type info that you'd use to draw
up the relation in UML.

Does this sound even remotely feasible?
Anyone try anything similar?
Thoughts on whether this would be worth the effort?

--
<[ Kent Dahl ]>================<[ http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~kentda/ ]>
  )__(stud.techn.;  ind. econ & management: computer technology)__(
 /"Opinions expressed are mine and not those of my Employer,      "\
( "the University, my girlfriend, stray cats, banana fruitflies,  " )
 \"nor the frontal lobe of my left cerebral hemisphere.           "/