The JQuery Tool A Generic QueryBased Code browser for Eclipse

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The JQuery ToolA Generic Query-BasedCode
browser for Eclipse
This project is supported by OTI Eclipse
Fellowship program

• Project leaders
• Kris De Volder, Gregor Kiczales
• Students
• Doug Janzen, Rajeswari Rajagopalan, Ray Suprio

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Why JQuery?

• IDE have a too many browsers problem
• Different type of view different type of
  browser tool
• Why is this undesirable?
• Usage issues
• Disorientation caused by switching between
  browsers
• Implementation issues
• Must implement many different browsers
• Hard to support highly specific browsers
• e.g. aware of specific naming / coding
  conventions
• specific to a task

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JQuery A Generic Browser

• Idea
• Browser
• navigable view on the result of a queryexpressed
  in a sufficiently expressive query language, run
  against a suitable data-base of code.

Prolog-like logic language

• Facts describing code structure
• class, method, field declarations
• inheritance relationships
• calling dependencies

Derived by calling Eclipse APIs
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The JQuery Eclipse plugin
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The JQuery Eclipse plugin
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Example 1 Method Browser
Methods in tyRuBa.util organized by name
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Example 2 Instance Creation Browser
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Example 3 Category Browser
Custom JavaDoc _at_category tags attached to
classes, interfaces and methods
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Example 3 Class Category Browser
Classes interfaces with_at_category
optimization tags
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Example 4 Customizing Browsers
Exploring creation of Figures in JHotdraw.
Edit a copy of Instance Creation Browser to only
show subtypes of Figure
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Example 4 Customizing Browsers
The resulting Figure Creation Browser
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Example 4 Customizing Browsers
The resulting Figure Creation Browser
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Our Experience with Eclipse

• What we liked
• Nice integration of our tool with professional
  IDE
• API access to Java source model
• Eclipse incremental compiler
• We can even run queries on code that contains
  compilation errors!!!
• What we didnt like so much
• Steep learning curve for the APIs
• e.g to get our code facts do we
• Use the AST package?
• Or use the more high-level search engine API?
• Search engine looked good but

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Download
The JQuery Tool A Generic Query-Based Code
browser for Eclipse JDT
Download The latest release of the JQuery
plugin papers about JQuery http//www.cs.ubc.ca
/labs/spl/projects/jquery.html