Generating sequence diagrams using call trees

• US 20060053414A1
• Filed: 09/09/2004
• Published: 03/09/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kyndryl Incorporated
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Pal, Kallol, Bhandari, Kapil, Bharti, Divya
• Granted Patent: US 7,506,320 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/133
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/74 Reverse engineering; Extracting design information from source code

Abstract

A software tool is provided to analyze static source code. Source Code files are selected to define the project work space. A class and a method in the class are selected from said selected source code files. The tool generates a Call Tree as an ordered recursive sequence of all method calls in different classes or their instances that are invoked by said selected method in said selected class. A Sequence Diagram is generated from said Call Tree. The tool remembers all updates to the Call Tree used to generate the Sequence Diagram. This information is used when a generated Sequence Diagram is impacted due to changes made to any source code file included in the project.

Claims

1. A method of analyzing static source code of a computer program, comprising:

selecting the source code files to be analyzed;

selecting a class name and method in the class in said source code files to be analyzed;

generating a call tree as an ordered recursive sequence of all method calls in different classes or their instances that are invoked by said selected method in said selected class;

generating a sequence diagram from said call tree; and

storing said sequence diagram.

2. The method as set forth in claim 1 including the step of storing the time stamps of said source code files.

3. The method as set forth in claim 1 including;

updating said call tree to form new design artifacts;

storing said new design artifacts; and

comparing the said call tree used to form said new design artifacts with the call tree used to form any previous design artifacts to determine any differences.

4. The method as set forth in claim 3 including the step of updating the call tree used to form said new design artifacts with any of said differences.

5. The method as set forth in claim 4 including the steps of selecting and storing class names to be ignored in creating new design artifacts.

6. A method of analyzing static source code of a computer program, comprising:

selecting the source code files to be analyzed;

parsing said source code files to determine method declarations, constructor declarations, variable declarations, method invocations and constructor invocations;

resolving all method and constructor declarations to determine return type of methods and their signatures;

resolving all method invocations having compound statements to determine the data type of both the variables on which said method invocations are invoked and the implicit methods invoked on said methods;

determining the classes corresponding to said variables and said implicit methods; and

resolving the order in which said methods are invoked.

7. The method as set forth in claim 6 including;

generating a call tree for a given start point in said source code files using the order in which said messages are invoked; and

generating a sequence diagram from said call tree using the methods calls as messages in the same order as they exist in said call tree.

8. The method as set forth in claim 7 wherein classes related to the class used as a start point are arranged around said start point class in radial fashion as a class diagram.

9. The method as set forth in claim 7 wherein changes manually made to said call tree are stored and applied to any newly generated call tree with the same start point.

10. The method as set forth in claim 7 including the steps of generating a plurality of different call trees and storing the data structure of each of said plurality of different call trees.

11. The method as set forth in claim 10 wherein selected ones of the Sequence Diagrams generated by said plurality of call trees are updated and the updated data saved as updated work products files.

12. The method as set forth in claim 11 including the steps of storing the time stamps of the selected source code files.

13. The method as set forth in claim 12 including the step of comparing the latest time stamps of said selected source code files to be analyzed with the stored time stamps to determine those source code files having a mismatch indicating that such source code files have changed.

14. The method as set forth in claim 13 including the step of searching through said work products files to determine which files are impacted by those source code files that have changed.

15. The method as set forth in claim 14 including the further step of updating the impacted work product files.

16. A system for analyzing static source code of a computer program, comprising;

means for storing source code files to be analyzed;

means for storing a selected class name and method in said class from said source code files to be analyzed;

means for generating a call tree as an ordered recursive sequence of all method calls in different classes or instances thereof that are invoked by said selected method in said selected class;

means for generating a sequence diagram from said call tree; and

means for storing said sequence diagram.

17. The system as set forth in claim 16 including means for storing the time stamps of said source code files.

18. The system as set forth in claim 17 including;

means for updating said call tree to form new design artifacts;

means for storing said new design artifacts; and

means for comparing the updated call tree with any previously updated call tree to determine any differences.

19. The system as set forth in claim 18 including means for updating the call tree for said new design artifacts with any of said differences.

20. The system as set forth in claim 18 including means to ignore selected classes when forming design artifacts.

21. The system as set forth in claim 16 including means to time stamp source code files as they are processed so that when a sequence diagram is generated any changes made to any source code files that affects the sequence diagram are identified.

22. A program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for analyzing static source code of a computer program, said method steps comprising:

selecting the computer program source code files to be analyzed;

selecting a class name and method in the class in said selected source code files to be analyzed;

generating a call tree as an ordered recursive sequence of all method calls in different classes or their instances that are invoked by said selected method in said selected class;

generating a sequence diagram from said call tree; and

storing said sequence diagram.

23. The method as set forth in claim 22 including the step of storing the time stamps of said source code files.

24. The method as set forth in claim 22 including:

updating said call tree to form new design artifacts;

storing said new design artifacts; and

comparing the call tree used to form said new design artifacts with the call tree used to form any previous design artifacts to determine any differences.

25. The method as set forth in claim 24 including the step of updating the call tree used to form said new design artifacts with any said differences.

26. The method as set forth in claim 23 including the steps of generating a plurality of different call trees and corresponding sequence diagrams and updating selected ones of said call trees and corresponding sequence diagrams and storing the updated data in work product file.

27. The method as set forth in claim 26 including the steps of storing the time stamps of the selected source code files.

28. The method as set forth in claim 27 including the steps of:

comparing the latest time stamps of the selected source code files with the stored time stamps to determine those source code files that have a mismatch indicating that such source code files have changed; and

searching through said work product files to determine which files were impacted by those source code files that have changed.

29. The method as set forth in claim 28 including the further step of updating the impacted work product files.

30. The method as set forth in claim 22 wherein said step of generating a call tree includes;

parsing said source code files to determine method declarations, constructor declarations, variable declarations, method invocations and constructor invocations;

resolving all method and constructor declarations to determine return type of methods and their signatures;

resolving all method invocations having compound statements to determine the data type of both the variables on which methods are invoked and the implicit methods invoked on said methods;

determining the classes corresponding to said variables and said implicit methods; and

resolving the order in which said methods are invoked.