research-article

Encapsulating and exploiting change with changeboxes

Authors:

Adrian Lienhard,

Oscar Nierstrasz,

Pascal ZumkehrAuthors Info & Claims

ICDL '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international conference on Dynamic languages: in conjunction with the 15th International Smalltalk Joint Conference 2007

Pages 25 - 49

https://doi.org/10.1145/1352678.1352681

Published: 25 August 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Real world software systems change continuously to meet new demands. Most programming languages and development environments, however, are more concerned with limiting the effects of change rather than enabling and exploiting change. Various techniques and technologies to exploit change have been developed over the years, but there exists no common support for these approaches. We propose Changeboxes as a general-purpose mechanism for encapsulating change as a first-class entity in a running software system. Changeboxes support multiple, concurrent and possibly inconsistent views of software artifacts within the same running system. Since Changeboxes are first-class, they can be manipulated to control the scope of change in a running system. Furthermore, Changeboxes capture the semantics of change. Changeboxes can be used, for example, to encapsulate refactorings, or to replay or analyze the history of changes. In this paper we introduce Changeboxes by means of a prototype implementation. We illustrate the benefits that Changeboxes offer for evolving software systems, and we present the results of a preliminary performance evaluation that assesses the costs associated with Changeboxes while suggesting possible strategies for improvement.

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cover image ACM Other conferences

ICDL '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international conference on Dynamic languages: in conjunction with the 15th International Smalltalk Joint Conference 2007

August 2007

254 pages

ISBN:9781605580845

DOI:10.1145/1352678

Conference Chairs:
Serge Demeyer
University of Antwerp
,
Jean-François Perrot
Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

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Published: 25 August 2007

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ICDL '07

ICDL '07: Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Dynamic Languages

August 25 - 31, 2007

Lugano, Switzerland

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ICDL '07 Paper Acceptance Rate 11 of 16 submissions, 69%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 11 of 16 submissions, 69%

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Ye YLi TAdjeroh DIyengar S(2017)A Survey on Malware Detection Using Data Mining TechniquesACM Computing Surveys10.1145/307355950:3(1-40)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3073559
Soetens QRobbes RDemeyer S(2017)Changes as First-Class CitizensACM Computing Surveys10.1145/303892650:2(1-38)Online publication date: 6-Apr-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3038926
Mattis TRein PHirschfeld R(2016)Transaction LayersProceedings of the 8th ACM International Workshop on Context-Oriented Programming10.1145/2951965.2951969(1-6)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2016
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