Interaction schemata: compiling interactions to code

Abstract

Programming object interactions is at the heart of object oriented programming. To improve reusability of the interactions, it is important to program object interactions generically. We present two tools that facilitate programming of object interactions. StructureBuilder, a commercial tool, achieves genericity with respect to data structure implementations for collections, following ideas from generic programming, but focussing only on the four most important actions add, delete, iterate and find that are used to translate UML interaction diagrams into code. The focus of StructureBuilder is to generate efficient code from interaction schemata that are an improved form of interaction diagrams. DJ, a new research prototype intended for fast prototyping, achieves genericity with respect to the UML class diagram by dynamic creation of collections based on traversal specifications.