Object Technology Licensing Corporation

Other

Lawrence L You

Michael D Wimble

Peter J McInerney

Narayan Rajgopal

Daniel S Keller

A set of portable services for debugging computer software programs is disclosed. The services provide an object-oriented programming framework which is portable to various hardware and operating system platforms. The framework consists primarily of a debugger server and a debugger client. Multiple debugger clients, which target multiple processes executing on heterogeneous systems, can be used concurrently from a single high-level debugger process. Clients can processes locally and remotely. An addressing abstraction is utilized to facilitate the use of target memory addresses in a portable fashion. The use of static compiler types such as void* in the C and C++ languages do not properly express this as a portable abstraction since they are limited to the static size as implemented by the compiler used to compile the debugger code. Two major classes are used to describe the abstraction itself; other subclasses are created to describe processor-specific addressing data.

Portable debugging services utilizing a client debugger object and a

A human-oriented object programming system (HOOPS) and its debugger provide an interactive and dynamic modeling system to assist in the incremental generation of symbolic information of computer programs that facilitates the development of complex computer programs such as operating systems and large applications with graphic user interfaces (GUIs). A program is modeled as a collection of units called components. A component represents a single compilable language element such as a class or a function. One major functionality built in HOOPS is the debugger, using symbolic properties. The database stores the components and properties. The debugger, using a GUI, displays to the user the execution state of the program. To display the execution state in terms of the programmer's source code, the debugger demands retrieval and/or generation of the symbolic properties of the program. The compiler, which is responsible for calculating the dependencies associated with a component, uses those dependencies to generate the information stored in symbolic properties. The debugger matches versions of source and object code and retrieves source code configuration as needed. Symbolic properties that are stored in the database can be removed to reduce database and disk memory usage; they can be later reconstructed using the same method of demand-based generation of symbolic information.

Demand-based generation of symbolic information

A human oriented object programming system (HOOPS) and its debugger provide an interactive and dynamic modeling system to assist in the incremental generation of symbolic information of computer programs which facilitates the development of complex computer programs such as operating systems and large applications with graphic user interfaces (GUIs). A program is modeled as a collection of units called components. A component represents a single compilable language element such as a class or a function. One major functionality built on HOOPS is the debugger, using symbolic properties. The database stores the components and properties. The debugger, using a GUI, displays to the user the execution state of the program. To display the execution state in terms of the programmer's source code, the debugger demands retrieval and/or generation of the symbolic properties of the program. The compiler, which is responsible for calculating the dependencies associated with a component, uses those dependencies to generate the information stored in symbolic properties. The debugger matches versions of source and object code and retrieves source code configuration as needed. Symbolic properties that are stored in the database can be removed to reduce database and disk memory usage; they can be later reconstructed using the same method of demand-based generation of symbolic information.

Demand based generation of symbolic information

A system for debugging software uses a portable debug environment-independent client debugger object and at least one non-portable server debugger object with platform-specific debugging logic. The client debugger object has a graphic user interface which allows a user to control and manipulate the server debugger object with debug environment-independent debug requests. The server debugger object performs a platform-specific debug operation on the software to be debugged. The platform-specific results generated by the debugging operation are translated to debug environment-independent results and returned to the client debugger object. This operation allows the same client debugger object to be used with one or more server debugger objects running on different platforms.

Debugging system with portable debug environment-independent client and

A set of portable services for debugging computer software programs is disclosed. The services provide an object-oriented programming framework which is portable to various hardware and operating system platforms. The framework consists primarily of a debugger server and a debugger client. Multiple debugger clients, which target multiple processes executing on heterogeneous systems, can be used concurrently from a single high-level debugger process. Clients can processes locally and remotely. The client interface is portable to any platform that supports C++. A string class defines storage for variable length character strings.

Portable debugging service utilizing a client debugger object and a

A human oriented object programming system provides an interactive and dynamic process for debugging computer programs which facilitates the development of complex computer programs such as operating systems and large applications with graphic user interfaces (GUIs). The system performs goal directed debugging in response to a user request. The user merely inputs a high level debugging request, and the system breaks down the request into a set of goals and subgoals for implementing the high level user request. The system automatically develops one or more hypotheses which are tested in attempting to handle the debugging request of the user. Once a hypothesis is found to be true, the system automatically initiates backtracking, and further hypothesis, if necessary, to carry out the user request.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Lawrence L You