I2SD: Reverse Engineering Sequence Diagrams from Enterprise Java Beans with Interceptors

Abstract

Abstract-An Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) interceptor is a software mechanism that provides for introducing behavior implemented as separate code into the execution of a Java application. In this way EJB interceptors provide a clear separation of the core functionality of the bean and other concerns, such as logging or performance analysis. Despite the beauty of the idea behind the interceptors, developing, testing and managing dependencies introduced by the interceptors are considered to be daunting tasks. For example, the developers can specify interceptors at multiple locations and by multiple means. However, different locations and specification means influence the order of the interceptor invocation, which is governed by more than fifteen different intertwined rules according to the EJB standard.To facilitate development of EJB applications we have designed I2SD, Interceptors to Sequence Diagrams, a tool for reverse engineering EJB applications with interceptors to UML sequence diagrams. I2SD provides the developer with a visual feedback and can be used by quality managers to get a broader understanding of the way interceptors are used in their project.

I2SD: reverse engineering Sequence Diagrams from Enterprise Java Beans with interceptors

“…Out of 323 014 methods that could possibly have been intercepted, only 5057 ( ≃ 1.57%) methods were intercepted. This result seems to support the finding of our previous study [27] stating that the use of interceptors is usually limited to a relatively small part of the software system. Closer inspection of the data reveals, however, a slightly different picture: † 19 systems did not include intercepted methods at all.…”

Testing Conformance of EJB 3 Enterprise Application Servers

“…Working with GlassFish Bob has learned that it is possible to expose all interfaces of a bean as local business interfaces by adding the Local annotation with no arguments, and used this to his advantage. Charlotte, Bob's senior, wants to gain more understanding of the application Bob is developing by calculating business-method-based metrics (Roubtsov et al, 2013). The metric tool she uses presents alarming results when analysing Bob's application.…”

“…However, this research focused on sequence diagram reconstruction for EJB-based applications with interceptors and also merely reported on the discrepancies rather than presenting an approach for the systematic discovery of those. As opposed to reconstructing a sequence diagram for one business method (Serebrenik et al, 2009), subsequent research on reverse engineering sequence diagrams for EJB-based applications with interceptors (Roubtsov et al, 2011;Roubtsov et al, 2013) advocated interceptor-based metric (scenario depth) and large-scale empirical studies of the interceptor use. Specifically, for large-scale empirical studies of the use of business method interceptors one first has to identify all business methods within a given project as only invocations of business methods can be intercepted by business method interceptors.…”

Automotive ADLS

“…Reverse engineering SysML sequence and activity diagrams from the source code can be considered similarly to [18] [30]. Furthermore, model-based development using automotive ADLs is a young field, where the language specification or metamodel of architectural models evolve in short period of time, which causes model co-evolution problem.…”