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Object Graphs with Ownership Domains: An Empirical Study

  • Chapter
Aliasing in Object-Oriented Programming. Types, Analysis and Verification

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 7850))

Abstract

Researchers have proposed many ownership type systems but reported limited experience with most of them on real object-oriented code. Only a few systems have been implemented, and there have been few substantial case studies done with those systems.

In order to better empirically evaluate ownership type systems, we have therefore conducted a number of case studies applying the Ownership Domains type system to programs at a larger scale. To facilitate the study of legacy code, we reimplemented Ownership Domains using available language support for annotations. After annotating and typechecking a range of object-oriented systems, we extracted global, hierarchical, Ownership Object Graphs (OOGs) using static analysis. OOGs provide an abstracted view that is consistent with programmer design intent, compared to flat object graphs that can be extracted without the benefit of the ownership annotations. An OOG also visualizes the system’s ownership structure and helps developers refine the annotations they add to better express the system’s design.

This paper shares our observations from studying the annotations and the extracted OOGs across several subject systems. We compute metrics on the annotations and on the extracted OOGs, to gain insights into the ownership relationships latent within object-oriented code and to evaluate the effectiveness of the abstraction mechanisms in OOGs.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 48202, USA

    Radu Vanciu & Marwan Abi-Antoun

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  1. Radu Vanciu
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  2. Marwan Abi-Antoun
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200A, 3001, Heverlee, Belgium

    Dave Clarke

  2. School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, Cottn Building, Gate 6, Kelburn Parade, 6140, Wellington, New Zealand

    James Noble

  3. Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Lägerhyddsvägen 2, 75237, Uppsala, Sweden

    Tobias Wrigstad

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Vanciu, R., Abi-Antoun, M. (2013). Object Graphs with Ownership Domains: An Empirical Study. In: Clarke, D., Noble, J., Wrigstad, T. (eds) Aliasing in Object-Oriented Programming. Types, Analysis and Verification. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7850. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36946-9_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36946-9_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36945-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36946-9

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