TESTING AND DEBUGGING FRAMEWORK FOR APPLICATION BUILDERS

• US 20080201687A1
• Filed: 04/22/2008
• Published: 08/21/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/09/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Soroker, Danny, Shani, Netta M.
• Granted Patent: US 8,352,920 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/101
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3664 Environments for testing or debugging software

Abstract

An application builder system and methodology enables a user to create an application using a builder (“builder application”); interactively edit the builder application by adding and removing application objects; interactively edit the properties of the application objects, including a new property called “debug level”; interactively set values of parameters for a code generator, including the value of a new parameter called “debug level”; invoking the code generator to automatically generate application code; and running the resulting generated application.

Claims

1. An application building tool for building a software application comprising:

an editor component for creating and editing a set of application objects, each application object including application object properties, one of said application object properties including a debug level property capable of being set to indicate participation of said object in a debug version;

a code generator component for generating an application capable of being executed from a high-level application constructed out of said application objects, said code generator component implementing a set of code generation parameters extended to include a debug level parameter for determining a debug level of the generated application,

whereby if a debug level parameter is set to then all the application objects are included in the generated application, otherwise, if the debug level parameter is not set, then debug objects having debug level property set, are omitted from the generated application.

2. The application building tool as claimed in claim 1, wherein said debug level property is a Boolean value.

3. The application building tool as claimed in claim 1, wherein said debug level property is an integer value, and said application objects included in the generated application are those whose debug level matches the debug level parameter used by said code generator.

4. The application building tool as claimed in claim 1, wherein an application object having a debug level property set enables viewing of program information in a display device.

5. The application building tool as claimed in claim 4, wherein program information displayed includes values of variables implemented in the built program.

6. The application building tool as claimed in claim 1, wherein an application object having a debug level property set enables display of a debug level button which may be selected by a user to invoke a test or debug activity.

7. The application building tool as claimed in claim 1, wherein the editor component provides a visual indication of the debug level of the application objects on a display device.

8. The application building tool as claimed in claim 1, wherein said editor component is a visual editor, said application building tool further including a GUI builder component providing a user interface to enable a user to create GUI objects, said objects including one or more of text box inputs or buttons.

9. The application building tool as claimed in claim 1, wherein said application building tool further includes a flow builder component providing a user interface to enable a user to create an application flow graph including nodes and arcs linking application steps.

10. A computer program device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform method steps for building a software application utilizing an application building tool, said method steps comprising:

a) creating and editing a set of application objects, each application object including application object properties, one of said application object properties including a debug level property capable of being set to indicate participation of said object in a debug version;

b) generating an application capable of being executed from a high-level application constructed out of said application objects;

c) implementing a set of code generation parameters including a debug level parameter for determining a debug level of the generated application, and

d) including all the application objects in the generated application if a debug level parameter is set, or, if the debug level parameter is not set, omitting debug objects having debug level property set from the generated application.