Ariadne Tutorial

For this part of the study, you will again explore the jEdit source code to describe the changes necessary to successfully resolve a change task. For this exploration you will use a software exploration tool called Ariadne. Feel free to ask the investigator any questions during this tutorial.

Overview of Ariadne

Ariadne is a software exploration tool that automatically issues queries on a developer's behalf. As each program elements is examined, Ariadne displays the results from a set of conceptual queries about that element. These conceptual queries include queries such as:

• for a type:
  • What methods return objects of this type?
  • What methods instantiate objects of this type?
  • What methods reference objects of this type as an argument?
  • What classes implement this interface?
  • What interfaces does this type implement?
• for a method:
  • What methods or initializers reference this method?
  • What interfaces define this method? (specification)
  • What classes implement this interface method?
  • What are the other alternative implementations of this method in the this hierarchy?
• for a field:
  • Where is the contents of a field obtains? (getters)
  • Where is the contents of a field set? (setters)

Basic Use

Ariadne is automatic, meaning that it responds to your interactions with the Eclipse environment such as selecting an item from the Outline view. The queries with results are listed in the Dossier view using an Eclipse tree view.

The queries are indicated with the following icon: . Queries in progress are indicated with a small hour-glass: .

The Dossier

Description:

A description of the element.

Category:

Queries are grouped by category (discussed below).

#E:

The total number of elements for either the query or the current group.

Clusterings:

The currently selected clustering, or the number of possible clusterings (discussed below).

#G:

The number of groups in the currently selected clustering (discussed below).

Query Categories

Queries are sorted by their category. There are currently four query categories:

declarations:

Queries about relations involving the declarations of elements.

inter-class:

Queries about relations between different classes.

intra-class:

Queries about relations within a class.

hierarchical:

Queries about relations involving type inheritance.

Clusterings

The results of queries may be clustered by their different attributes. For example: the references to a method, which are generally themselves methods, may be clustered into different groups identified by attributes such as their access protection (public, private, package, or default), their containing type, their package, or boolean attributes such as static vs. non-static. Some clusterings may have results belong to multiple groups, such as might arise for a clustering by argument types: the method Arrays.addList(Collection, Object[]) would added to groups for Collection and Object.

The Dossier Toolbar

• : collapse all branches of the tree.
• : do not cause the dossier to change with new selections. Queries may still be made explicitly using the keyboard shortcut F9.
• : re-open original query element.
• : select from previously queried-for elements.

Hands On

Try Ariadne out!

• Bring up JHotDraw's org.jhotdraw.framework.Figure interface in the editor using Open Type (Control-Shift-T).

• If the Dossier is not already present, push the F9 key. The Dossier view should pop up and be populated with a set of queries. When the queries are finished, which should take a few seconds, you should see a view like this:

  

• Try expanding some of the tree elements, such as for the query superinterfaces, showing the super interfaces specified by Figure. Right-click on the first result for this query, Cloneable: the normal Java operations are available from this elements.

• The query implementors has many results (44), however Ariadne was able to find 3 different means of grouping these results. To access these groupings, right click on the element, and choose the Cluster results by... menu.

  

  Choose to cluster by the enclosing package: to cluster the results by their package.

• Now click on the re-open original query element button . This causes the original queried-upon element Figure to be re-opened.

• Try selecting the Figure.decompose() method from the Outline view, and notice the Dossier's contents have changed with the query results about the new element.

You may wish to try some of the other toolbar buttons.

When you are ready to proceed, please notify the investigator.