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Mixin layers: an object-oriented implementation technique for refinements and collaboration-based designs

Authors:

Yannis Smaragdakis,

Don BatoryAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Volume 11, Issue 2

Pages 215 - 255

https://doi.org/10.1145/505145.505148

Published: 01 April 2002 Publication History

Abstract

A "refinement" is a functionality addition to a software project that can affect multiple dispersed implementation entities (functions, classes, etc.). In this paper, we examine large-scale refinements in terms of a fundamental object-oriented technique called collaboration-based design. We explain how collaborations can be expressed in existing programming languages or can be supported with new language constructs (which we have implemented as extensions to the Java language). We present a specific expression of large-scale refinements called mixin layers, and demonstrate how it overcomes the scalability difficulties that plagued prior work. We also show how we used mixin layers as the primary implementation technique for building an extensible Java compiler, JTS.

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Index Terms

Mixin layers: an object-oriented implementation technique for refinements and collaboration-based designs
1. Software and its engineering

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cover image ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology Volume 11, Issue 2

April 2002

142 pages

ISSN:1049-331X

EISSN:1557-7392

DOI:10.1145/505145

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Copyright © 2002 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 01 April 2002

Published in TOSEM Volume 11, Issue 2

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