International Business Machines Corporation

John M Vlissides

Steven R Abrams

Ian D Simmonds

Tova Roth

Wim De Pauw

Paul Turquand Keyser

Douglas Neil Kimelman

Eric Marshall Nelson

Bard Bloom

Steven Tang

James E Carey

Mark N Wegman

Timothy James Graser

Kathryn Ann Bohrer

Anders Magnus Nilsson

Brent A Carlson

Vincent J Cina, Jr

Wendy D Neuberger

Douglas N Kimelman

David Hod Lorenz

Andrew R Helm

A method and system are disclosed for manipulating a model, where that model represents some or all of a design. The design includes a multitude of design elements, the model includes a multitude of model elements, and each of the design elements is represented by a single model element. The method comprises the steps of generating a suite of documents from the model, each of the documents describing a view of the model; and displaying the documents to a user as a series of forms. The user provides information to the forms to change the documents, and changes to the documents result in both changes to the model and consistent changes across the suite of documents. In the preferred embodiment, the model identifies specific relationships between the elements of the model, and each of the model elements has defined properties.

Manipulating design models by editing generated reports

The invention broadly and generally provides, in a computer-controlled display, a method of simplifying a graphical representation of a set of connected nodes comprising the steps of: (a) selecting a subset of the aforesaid set; and (b) under computer program control, hiding representations of all nodes except (i) nodes within the aforesaid subset and (ii) at least one node having a defined relationship to the aforesaid subset.

Method and system for automatically hiding irrelevant parts of hierarchical structures in computer user interfaces

A method and system are disclosed for creating a hyperlink together with an associated semantic link between a source entity, and a target entity. The source entity includes descriptive text. The system includes means for selecting text within the source entity, and means for selecting the target entity. Also, means are provided for selecting a type of semantic link, and means are provided for creating a hyperlink between said selected text and said target entity. The system further includes means for creating a semantic link of said type between said source entity and said target entity, including means for including in the hyperlink a reference to said semantic link. In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the means for selecting the type of semantic link includes means for prompting a user to select from among a plurality of candidate types of semantic links.

Method and system for creating semantic relationships using hyperlinks

An improved method and system is described for implementing double dispatch extensibly and efficiently in single-dispatch object-oriented programming languages. Objects of type Visitor encapsulate double dispatch functionality, while objects of type Element act as operands. Double dispatch takes place by calling Accept on an object of type Element, passing an object of type Visitor as an argument. Concrete classes of type Element are added in groups, each group deriving from an abstract subclass of Element. An AbstractElement class augments the Element interface with an Accept operation that takes an object of type AppVisitor as an argument, where AppVisitor is an abstract subclass of Visitor. AppVisitor overrides the base class Visit operation to test the type of its Element argument, casting it into an AppElement and calling its augmented Accept. By committing to a client-specific AppVisitor interface as deeply in the Visitor class hierarchy as possible, the set of concrete element subclasses may be extended without changing the Visitor base class. Clients that rely on double dispatch are thus unaffected by such extension. Moreover, by calling the AbstractElement-augmented Accept rather than performing more extensive type tests for concrete Element subclasses, running time is improved over approaches that rely on more extensive type testing. Default functionality is easily accommodated as well.

Extensible and efficient double dispatch in single-dispatch object-oriented programming languages

An improved method and system for visualizing an object-oriented program's execution in a manner that facilitates understanding, debugging, and tuning programs of arbitrary size and complexity by visually depicting a sequence of one or more messages to an object or between objects as a tree. Each node in the tree represents an object, and each edge represents a message between the objects. To manage the complexity of what is displayed, the user may elect to collapse subtrees so that they appear in abbreviated form. The user may expand collapsed subtrees so that they are visible in full. By selectively expanding and collapsing subtrees, the user can examine only those parts of the execution that are immediately relevant. The user may specify additional criteria for classifying subtrees, i.e., the conditions under which two subtrees are deemed equivalent. The system can then consolidate equivalent subtrees automatically, replacing them with a more general execution pattern that subsumes them all. Furthermore, an execution pattern can be augmented with summary (e.g., performance or complexity) information. This summary information reflects characteristics of the message sequences, for example, the resource usage they incur, or a measure of their complexity. Preferably, the summary information is superimposed graphically on the execution pattern's graphical rendition.

Visualizing execution patterns in object-oriented programs

A method of developing a software system using Object Oriented Technology and frameworks. The problem of allowing an object to acquire and lose ability and function and to modify responsibilities on an object dynamically or, in other words, to allow an object to acquire and lose the ability to do things dynamically, is addressed. This problem is solved with a framework to be used for developing a software system, e.g. for a business application. The framework comprises a number of classes which are to be processed by a computer system. The framework further comprises a Life Cycle as a description of state transitions through which an object can proceed as it is processed by an application. This is applicable in the technical field of application development of software systems, e.g. for a business application as Financial or Logistic and Distribution, wherein it is the purpose of frameworks to provide significant portions of the application that are common across multiple implementations of the application in a general manner, easy to extend for specific implementation.

Method of developing a software system using object oriented technology

During the execution of an object-oriented program, an execution model extracts information from events in an event stream to create a dictionary of (stored) 'communication records.' These communication records represent communications to or between objects. A client program permits a user to query the records of the dictionary to access information and gain a better understanding of the program's execution. Different dictionary structures for storing information can be used to represent the communication records for these communications. Moreover, in alternative preferred embodiments, the dictionary can be arranged in various hierarchical structures. By providing different dictionary structures, the invention is flexible enough to accommodate many types of user queries.

Storing and querying execution information for object-oriented programs

A dynamic visual presentation animates how classes or objects send messages and relate to each other in an object-oriented program during the program's execution. The presentation depicts classes or objects as graphical nodes on a computer display. The relative proximity of these nodes varies to reflect a specific relationship between classes or objects: either communication, creation frequency, or aggregation. Communication between objects is also dynamically depicted as a set of one or more line segments each passing through two or more of the nodes that have classes of methods on a call stack. Mapping these conceptual relationships into dynamic, spatial relationships makes them explicit and observable, allowing a user to better understand, debug, and tune the object-oriented program.

Growing community of inventors

Mohegan Lake, NY, United States of America

John M Vlissides