The Fox - A Tool for Java Object Graph Analysis

CS-TR-02-28

Authors: Alex Potanin, Elvis Software Design Research Group ~
Source: GZipped PostScript (2384kb); Adobe PDF (1684kb)


Examination of the memory graphs of object inter-dependencies is hard. Current methods are either too time consuming for the average software developer or they ignore important information. I present a flexible query language to analyse a memory graph of a given Java program. I describe a tool, called Fox, that employs the query language to work with heap snapshots of running Java programs, and present a selection of interesting metrics collected using this tool. The Fox tool and the query language it supports will allow the researchers in the area of aliasing in object-oriented systems to verify their theories quickly and reliably.

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