Reflexion models are a software system summarization technique developed to aid a software engineer in understanding and reasoning about the structure of large
software systems. Essentially, a reflexion model allows a software
developer to view the structure of a system's source through a chosen
high-level (often architectural) view.
There are two versions of a Reflexion Model tool available:
Eclipse Plugin (NEW: 16/12/2003)
The update site for the Eclipse plugin is "http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphy/jRMTool/eclipse/updates". Use the Eclipse update manager to install the plugin. This plugin can compute reflexion models for Eclipse Java projects. It has been verified to work in Eclipse 2.1.1.
The source for the Eclipse plugin has been released on sourceforge.net .
Stand-alone Version (Older)
The stand-alone RMTool for computing reflexion models depends on four basic inputs:
RMTool supports the computation of reflexion models for many different kinds of systems. Note, however, that RMTool does not include any capability to analyze the source of the system of interest. Instead, programs or scripts are used to convert information extracted by other tools into the format expected by RMTool. A program (CiaoToRMTool) is provided with the RMTool distribution to convert information extracted by the AT&T set of source analysis tools (for C/C++/Java) into the RMTool format. As the RMTool source model format is simple, it is usually straightforward to write scripts to convert information extracted by your favourite tool.
(You might also be interested in reading about our lexical source model extract technique which is intended to simplify the extraction of source model information from a variety of source artifacts. E-mail email@example.com for more information on this tool).
A beta version of RMTool (Version 2.0-updated April 9, 2001) is available. A simple graphical interface is provided to compute and interact with reflexion models. Alternatively, reflexion models may be computed using a set of command-line utilities.
To learn more about how to use RMTool, browse the documentation.
Version 2.0 of RMTool is a re-write of the original tools in Java. To run, RMTool, you must:
To download the stand-alone RMTool, follow this link.
For more information about reflexion models and related information, try:
Last updated on: December 17, 2003