A Declarative Evolution Framework for Object-Oriented Design Patterns

1. A Declarative Evolution Framework for Object-Oriented Design Patterns Tom Mens Tom Tourwé {tom.mens | tom.tourwe}@vub.ac.be Programming Technology Lab Vrije Universiteit Brussel

2. Overview • Introduction to design patterns • Specification of design patterns and their instances • Evolution of design pattern instances • Evolution conflicts • Tool support • Conclusion • Future work

3. Design patterns • Offer successful and proven solutions for a design problem that occurs over and over again • Improve understandability, maintainability, extensibility, reusability, etc. • Are used in most object-oriented frameworks • Gain increasing popularity • Impose specific structure on implementation • Define hot spots of an object-oriented framework • Dictate relationships and collaborations between a set of classes/methods

4. Model View changed update PluggableListViewOfMany PluggableListViewByItem update update Example: Observer instance in MVC dependents

5. Pattern specification and constraint definition Use declarative meta programming patternInstance(MVC, ObserverDP). role(MVC, observer, [View]). role(MVC, concreteObserver, [PluggableListViewByItem]). role(MVC, concreteObserver, [PluggableListViewOfMany). role(MVC, subject, [Model]). role(MVC, updateMethod, [#update]). role(MVC, changeMethod, [#changed]) patternConstraint(?instance, ObserverDP) if role(?instance, subject, ?subject), role(?instance, changeMethod, ?changeselector), role(?instance, updateMethod,?updateselector), concreteMethod(?subject, ?changeselector), calls(?subject,?changeselector,?updateselector) declarative specification of the design pattern instance declarative constraint imposed by the design pattern on every instance

6. Automated transformations • Refactorings • High-level structural transformations that can be applied to a framework in a behavior-preserving way • E.g., extractSuperclass, addParameter • Design Pattern Refactorings • Refactorings specific for a particular design pattern • Are composed of a number of ordinary refactorings • Applied to design pattern instances • Make sure the constraints imposed by the pattern are adhered to • E.g., addConcreteObserver, addUpdateMethod • All refactorings are specified declaratively

7. extractSuperclass refactoring changed: update: aSymbol PluggableList addChangeMethod design pattern refactoring update PluggableListViewOfMany PluggableListViewByItem update update update: aSymbol update: aSymbol role(MVC, changeMethod, [#changed:]). role(MVC, updateMethod, [#update:]). PluggableListViewOfMany PluggableListViewByItem Example evolutions View Model update changed

8. Evolution conflicts • Changes to the software • Applied manually • insufficient knowledge of design patterns (instances) can lead to violation of constraints • Via automated (design pattern) refactorings • problems when changes by different developers must be merged • Structural merge conflicts • Behavioural merge conflicts • All conflicts can be detected using a declarative approach

9. update and update: are implemented differently! Structural merge conflict View Model update changed changed: update: aSymbol PluggableList update PluggableListViewOfMany PluggableListViewByItem update: aSymbol update: aSymbol

10. QSOULPluggableListView update Problems with QSOULPluggableListView (1) it does not implement update: (2) it is no subclass of PluggableList Constraint violations View Model update changed changed: update: aSymbol PluggableList update update: aSymbol PluggableListViewOfMany PluggableListViewByItem

11. same hierarchy same role Declarative conflict detection • Explicitly log all refactorings applied and the software entities they work on • Compare them one by one • Different changes to one and the same software entity may lead to a conflict extractSuperclass View PluggableListView PLVByItem PLVOfMany update addChangeMethod View PLVByItem PLVOfMany update: changed:

12. Tool Support • Specification facilities • User-friendly interface on top of declarative medium • Browsing facilities • All software entities (classes/methods/…) that participate in a given DP instance • All DP instances in which a given software entity (class/method/…) participates • Support for evolution and merging • Offer list of refactorings that can be applied • Provide warnings for possible conflicts • Suggest solutions where possible

13. Tool Support

14. Conclusion • Automated support for software evolution • Through disciplined evolution of design pattern instances used in the framework • Via explicit declarative specification and automated transformation of those instances • Detection of evolution conflicts • Structural & behavioural conflicts; constraint violation • Using explicit high-level knowledge of the design and its evolution

15. Future Work • Extensive validation on industrial cases • Tool support & integration in existing IDEs • Scalability of the approach • Allow for different design pattern variants • Many design patterns exist & new ones are constantly discovered • Metapatterns as an abstraction of design patterns • Formal basis for conflict detection • Define conditions under which particular conflicts occur • Requires formalisation of metapatterns