Nov 07, 2009 - 10:28 PM  
XVCL :: Technology for Reuse based on Bassett's frames  
 

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Complex Example

 

This example uses the development of a generic Compute Sum program to illustrate XVCL concepts and the usage of XVCL commands.

Problem description

In a galaxy far far away, there is a peaceful world of aliens and humans.

We assume that know that aliens and humans have the following commonalities: they all have name, age, weight and height. A human by default has one head, two legs, while an alien may have more than one head and some wings. Different aliens may have different number of heads and wings. A human also needs money that is not necessary for the aliens.

Now we want to compute the total number of heads of all aliens and humans in this world. For aliens, we are also curious of the total number of wings. For humans, we also want to know the total amount of the money they possess. So how shall we develop a flexible and generic solution for computing the total number of different properties of different objects? We shall now introduce an XVCL-based solution.

We have identified the following variants from the problem description:

· Class (CLASS): We have two different classes here, Human and Alien.

· Computable properties of the objects (COMPUTABLE): Could be Head, Wing, Money, Legs, etc.

· The type of the value (VALUE_TYPE): Values of the properties could be of different types.

  For example, Head is of type integer, while Money is of type double.

· Initial sum (INIT_SUM): The initial sum value before the computation.

Our x-frames should be flexible and generic enough to accommodate all these variants. From the x-frames, we could construct specific programs for computing sum of different properties of different objects.

The Being x-frame

Since Human and Alien have much in common, we could design a generic x-frame to capture the commonality between them. This x-frame is also capable of accommodating variability between the two.

Figure 1 shows the Being x-frame.

<x-frame name="Being" language="java">

    <set var="BEING" value="Being_Class"/>    

    <break name="BEING_PARAMETERS"/>  

    class <value-of expr="?@BEING?"/> {

        String Name;

        int Age;  

        double Weight;

        double Height;  

        <break name="BEING_BODY"/>  

        public String getName() {return Name;}

        public int getAge() {return Age;}

            public double getWeight() {return Weight;}

            public double getHeight() {return Height;}  

            <break name="BEING_NEW_METHODS"/>

    };

</x-frame>

Figure 1: The Being x-frame

In Figure 1, the first line in the frame <x-frame name=”BEING" language="Java"> shows that the x-frame name is Being, and the language in which the x-frame is written is Java. The x-frame contains a generic class. We use a XVCL variable BEING_CLASS to represent the Java class name. The <set> command is used here to define the meta-variable BEING_CLASS with the default value of “Being”. This value can be overwritten by specific values defined in high-level x-frames (e.g., in SPC). The command <value-of expr="?@BEING_CLASS?"/> indicates a place holder where the actual value of the variable  can be substituted during x-frame adaptation.

The x-frame captures the commonality between Human and Alien class. Common attributes (such as Name, Age, Weight and Height) and methods that manipulate those attributes are represented as x-frame body. The x-frame also captures variabilities. While having much in common, Human and Alien are also different – they have different inherent properties (attributes), and have different methods. To accommodate more attributes and methods of the Being class, we introduce two breakpoints BEING_BODY and BEING_NEW_METHODS, respectively. The breakpoints define slots at which specific implementations defined in the higher-level x-frames (e.g., in SPC) can be <insert>ed during x-frame adaptation.

As the x-frame may need additional meta-variables, we use the command <break name="BEING_NEW_PARAMETERS"/> to indicate a breakpoint at which the declarations of additional XVCL variables may be inserted.

Human x-frame

Figure 2 shows the Human x-frame. A human is the same as a being except that it also has its unique properties – one head, two legs and some money. Thus, we can develop Human class by adapting the Being x-frame.  After adapting, the Human class has all the attributes and methods that a being has. Human specific attributes and methods are <insert>ed into the corresponding breakpoints.

<x-frame name="Human" language="java">

    <adapt x-frame="Being.xvcl">

              <insert break="BEING_PARAMETERS">

                  <set var="BEINGS_CLASS" value="Human"/>

              </insert>

              <insert break="BEING_BODY">     

              int Head = 1;

              int Legs = 2;

    double Money;

            </insert>

    </adapt>

</x-frame>

Figure 2: The Human  x-frame


Alien x-frame

Figure 3 shows the Alien x-frame. An alien is the same as a being except that it also has its unique properties – head, wings, etc. Thus, we can also develop Alien class by adapting the Being x-frame.  After adapting, the Alien class has all the attributes and methods that a being has. All Alien specific attributes and methods are <insert>ed into the corresponding breakpoints.

<x-frame name="Alien" language="java">

    <adapt x-frame="Being.xvcl">

          <insert break="BEING_PARAMETERS">

                       <set var="BEINGS_CLASS" value="Alien"/>

          </insert>

          <insert break="BEING_BODY">     

                int Head;

                int Wings;

            </insert>

    </adapt>

</x-frame>

Figure 3: The Alien x-frame


Compute Sum x-frame

Figure 4 shows an x-frame that computes the total number of properties of a set of objects.

This x-frame contains a generic Java function "computeSum_func" which provides a generic solution that supports different attributes, attribute types, and classes. For example, it can compute the sum of Alien.Head, Alien.Wing, Human.Head, Human.Legs, or Human.MONEY.   All variants identified in Problem Description section are accommodated.  

We use a multi-value variable VALUES to represent a set of values to be computed. The actual value of the multi-value variable is specified in SPC. The code about  constructing an actual  Java vector object (the parameter needed by the ComputeSum function) is generated through the <while> command. 

<x-frame name="ComputeSum">

     <set var="INIT_SUM" value="0"/>                 <!--The inital value of the sum-->

     <set var="VALUE_TYPE" value="int"/>                    <!--The type of the value-->

     <set var="CLASS" value="class"/>               <!--The class of the objects-->

     <set var="COMPUTABLE" value="computeable"/>   <!--The property to be computed-->

 

     <set var="LT" value="&lt;"/>                       <!--The XML "less than" operator-->

     <set var="GT" value="&gt;"/>                  <!--The XML "greater than" operator-->

 

     <break name="COMPUTESUM_NEWPARAMETERS"/>

 

import java.util.*;

 

public class ComputeSum{  

                                 // A generic Compute Sum function

          public static  <value-of expr="?@VALUE_TYPE?"/> computeSum_func(Vector Objects) {      

              <value-of expr="?@CLASS?"/s> object;

              <value-of expr="?@VALUE_TYPE?"/> sum = <value-of expr="?@INIT_SUM?"/>;

        

                  for (int i=0; i <value-of expr="?@LT?"/> Objects.size(); i++) {

                object = (<value-of expr="?@CLASS?"/>)Objects.elementAt(i);

                  sum = sum + object.<value-of expr="?@COMPUTABLE?"/>;        

              }

                   

              <break name="COMPUTESUM_NEWCODE"/>

               

              return sum;

          }

 

          public static void main(String args[]) {

 

                                    //An Java Vector which contains a set of objects to be computed 

              Vector Objects = new Vector();   

                                

                                   // Constructing the vector

            <set var="NUMBER" value="1"/>

            <while using-items-in="VALUES">       

                                                     // Creating an object  

                <value-of expr="?@CLASS?"/>   Obj<value-of expr="?@NUMBER?"/> =  

                       new <value-of expr="?@CLASS?"/>();

 

                                                    // Assigning value to the object

                Obj<value-of expr="?@NUMBER?"/>.<value-of expr="?@COMPUTABLE?"/> = 

                       <value-of expr="?@VALUES?"/>;  

 

                                                   // Adding the object into the vector

                Objects.addElement(Obj<value-of expr="?@NUMBER?"/>);       

        

                                                  // Ready for processing next object

                <set var="NUMBER" value="?@NUMBER? + 1"/>  

 

            </while>

                                // Invoking the ComputeSum function and display the result
            System.out.println("The result of the computation is " + computeSum_func(Objects)); 

      }

}

 

</x-frame>

Figure 4: The ComputeSum x-frame


Specification x-frame (SPC)

Figure 5 shows an SPC for the ComputeSum x-frame of Figure 4. We want to compute the total number of the heads that the aliens have. The meta-variable CLASS is set to “Alien”, COMPUTABLE is set to “Head”, and the VALUE_TYPE is set to “int”. We have three aliens to compute, with 1, 2 and 4 heads respectively. Given the SPC, the XVCL processor  adapts the  ComputeSum and Alien x-frames, and constructs  a specific program that can compute the total number of alien heads.

<x-frame name="ComputeSum_SPC" outfile="ComputeSum.java">  

<set var="CLASS" value="Alien"/>     

<set var="COMPUTABLE" value="Head"/>

<set var="VALUE_TYPE" value="int"/>  

<set-multi var="VALUES" value="1, 2, 4"/> 

<adapt x-frame="ComputeSum.XVCL"/>

<adapt x-frame="Alien.XVCL"/>    

</x-frame>

Figure 5: An SPC for ComputeSum x-frame

Figure 6 shows another SPC for the ComputeSum x-frame. This time, we are interested in computing the total amount of the money that the humans have. The meta-variable CLASS is now set to “Human”, COMPUTABLE is set to “Money”, the VALUE_TYPE is set to "double”, and the INIT_SUM is set 100. Although the class, computable properties, properties' types, and initial value are all changed, we can still use the same ComputeSum x-frame to construct a specific program that meets our needs.

<x-frame name="ComputeSum_SPC" outfile="ComputeSum.java">

<set var="INIT_SUM" value="100"/> 
<set var="VALUE_TYPE" value="double"/>
<set var="CLASS" value="Human"/> 
<set var="COMPUTABLE" value="Money"/>  
<set-multi var="VALUES" value="10.0, 20000.0, 2.0"/>  

<adapt x-frame="ComputeSum.XVCL"/>

<adapt x-frame="Human.XVCL"/>    

</x-frame>

Figure 6: Another SPC for ComputeSum x-frame


Run the example

The complete Compute Sum example can be downloaded from here.

You need an XVCL processor v2.0 (beta 1), JDOM (8.0 or above) and 
a JDK 1.4 (or above) to run this example. Make sure that all needed packages are in your class path.

The command for XVCL processing is as follows:

         java xvcl.XVCL ComputeSum.S

Please note that this example sets the XVCL DTD path to file:///xvcl.dtd. You may change it to reflect your XVCL settings.

A java file ComputeSum.java will be generated after the frame (x-frame) processing. You may then compile and execute the program:

          javac ComputeSum.java

          java   ComputeSum

You may try to modify the ComputeSum.S to generate different versions of the ComputeSum, and observe how the XVCL works. 

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