Classbox/J: Controlling the Scope of Change in Java

Bergel, Alexandre; Ducasse, Stéphane; Nierstrasz, Oscar (2005). Classbox/J: Controlling the Scope of Change in Java. In: 20th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (pp. 177-189). New York, USA: ACM Press 10.1145/1094811.1094826

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Unanticipated changes to complex software systems can introduce anomalies such as duplicated code, suboptimal inheritance relationships and a proliferation of run-time downcasts. Refactoring to eliminate these anomalies may not be an option, at least in certain stages of software evolution. Classboxes are modules that restrict the visibility of changes to selected clients only, thereby offering more freedom in the way unanticipated changes may be implemented, and thus reducing the need for convoluted design anomalies. In this paper we demonstrate how classboxes can be implemented in statically-typed languages like Java. We also present an extended case study of Swing, a Java GUI package built on top of AWT, and we document the ensuing anomalies that Swing introduces. We show how Classbox/J, a prototype implementation of classboxes for Java, is used to provide a cleaner implementation of Swing using local refinement rather than subclassing.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Computer Science (INF)
08 Faculty of Science > Institute of Computer Science (INF) > Software Composition Group (SCG) [discontinued]

UniBE Contributor:

Ducasse, Stephane, Nierstrasz, Oscar

Subjects:

000 Computer science, knowledge & systems
500 Science > 510 Mathematics

ISBN:

1-59593-031-0

Publisher:

ACM Press

Language:

English

Submitter:

Anja Ebeling

Date Deposited:

30 Oct 2017 12:54

Last Modified:

11 Apr 2024 16:11

Publisher DOI:

10.1145/1094811.1094826

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.104386

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/104386

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