Research on "Formal Methods in Computing"

Dynamic Object Re-classification

Work partially supported by IST-2001-322222 MIKADO; IST-2001-33477 DART; MURST Cofin '99 TOSCA, Cofin'00 AITCFA, Cofin'01 COMETA, Cofin'01 NAPOLI; CNR-GNSAGA; and the EPSRC (Grant Ref: GR/L 76709).

ABSTRACT. Re-classification changes at run-time the class membership of an object while retaining its identity. We suggest language features for object re-classification, which could extend an imperative, typed, class-based, object-oriented language. We present our proposal through the language Fickle (Fickle is the successor of an earlier proposal, Fickle-99; although both Fickle and Fickle-99 address the same requirement for object re-classification, the approaches are very different). The imperative features combined with the requirement for a static and safe type system provided the main challenges. We develop a type and effect system for Fickle and prove its soundness with respect to the operational semantics. In particular, even though objects may be re-classified across classes with different members, they will never attempt to access non-existing members.

1. Workshop paper (FOOL'01) -- preliminary version of the below ECOOP'01 paper -- ps, ps.gz (also available in the Electronic proceedings of FOOL8 )
2. Conference paper (ECOOP'01) -- ps, ps.gz ( © Springer-Verlag )
3. Journal paper (ACM TOPLAS) -- presents an improved version of Fickle (called FickleII) -- pdf ( © ACM, 2003 )

• The ICTCS'01 paper " An effective translation of Fickle into Java "
• The TOSCA'01 paper " A type preserving translation of Fickle into Java "
• The ICTCS'03 paper " Refined Effects for Unanticipated Object Re-classification: Fickle3 "
• The ACM TOPLAS paper " A provenly correct translation of Fickle into Java "
• The unpublished papers:
  • "Three case studies in FickleII" ( pdf) -- some EXAMPLES which demostrate how object re-classification in FickleII can be used
  • "Examples in Fickle" ( pdf) -- some EXAMPLES which demostrate how object re-classification in Fickle can be used

BIBTEX.

@inproceedings{DrossopoulouDamianiDezaniGiannini:FOOL-01,
   author    = {S. Drossopoulou and F. Damiani and M. Dezani-Ciancaglini
                and P. Giannini},
   title     = {Fickle: Dynamic Object Re-classification},
   booktitle = {Electronic proceedings of FOOL8 
                (http://www.cs.williams.edu/~kim/FOOL/)},
   year      = {2001}
}

@inproceedings{DrossopoulouDamianiDezaniGiannini:ECOOP-01,
   author    = {S. Drossopoulou and F. Damiani and M. Dezani-Ciancaglini 
                and P. Giannini},
   title     = {Fickle: Dynamic object re-classification},
   booktitle = {ECOOP'01},
   year      = {2001},
   publisher = {Springer},
   pages     = {130-149},
   series    = {LNCS 2072}
}

@article{DrossopoulouDamianiDezaniGiannini:TOPLAS-02,
   author      = {S. Drossopoulou and F. Damiani and M. Dezani-Ciancaglini 
                  and P. Giannini},
   title       = {More Dynamic Object Re-classification: FickleII},
   journal   = {ACM Transactions On Programming Languages and Systems},
   year      = {2002},
   volume    = {24},
   number    = {2},
   pages     = {153-191},
   publisher = {ACM}
}