Comments on: Analyzing Dataflow with IntelliJ IDEA

By: David Castañeda

David Castañeda — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:30:53 +0000

This funtionality is great, ….

I have a question… how can I see the flow to a method because this is only for data.

Say for example something like if I search for mx() it shows…

ma() -> mb() -> mx()
mc() -> md() -> me() -> mx()

So I can determinate all places in application code that, if a change is made mx(), tell me what can be affected.

If there is no such an option at this time, do you think it can be done with a plugin?

By: Eugene Kirpichov

Eugene Kirpichov — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:02:01 +0000

Guys, IDEA is rapidly rising to the first positions in my personal list of most respected programs; so is JetBrains. This is simply terrific, please keep up the recent spree of inspiration that seems to go into MAIA.

By: AlexL

AlexL — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:44:02 +0000

Re: the naming of the commands, I immediately understood what “Dataflow to this” and “Dataflow from this” meant. By explicitly mentioning the direction tot he point of reference (this), it was very clear.

In contrast, I’m always confused between “Analyze Dependencies” and “Analyze Backward Dependencies”, and I think the issue there is it doesn’t explicitly indicate the direction to/from the object in question, e.g. “Dependencies on this” or “Dependencies of this”.

So, please whatever you do, don’t name it:

“Analyze Forward Dataflow”
“Analyze Backward Dataflow”

You can talk yourself into doing that, reasoning that the “to this” and “from this” are implicit, e.g.
“Analyze Forward Dataflow” [to this]
“Analyze Backward Dataflow” [from this]

But after awhile you forget about the “to this” and “from this” and then it starts getting confusing. I would much rather make the direction to/from the reference point explicit.

If you want to make it consistent with the other menu items, how about this:
“Analyze Dataflow to this”
“Analyze Dataflow from this”.

My 2cent. Thanks,

By: Dirk Dittert

Dirk Dittert — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:06:51 +0000

Please keep up the good work! Blog posts like this one are very important to learn the full power of IDEA!

How about creating a screencast for this feature?

By: AlexL

AlexL — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:40:47 +0000

Alexey,

This looks very impressive! I love to see IDEA developing more analysis and refactoring tools for java, compared to all the effort on non-java languages and integrations in the past releases.

One question: Will the analysis use multiple threads? On a large code base, this kind of analysis can take time, so it would be great if it can take advantage of multi-core processors.
Thanks,

By: dsha

dsha — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:20:12 +0000

How about adding a verb to the feature name? Something like ‘Trace dataflow from’ and ‘Trace dataflow to’. This would actually be consistent with the menu where it appears, for everything else there starts with a verb.

By: Tero

Tero — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:00:34 +0000

This is just great! Keep up the good work guys!

Looks like Maia is going to be the version even I’d find something useful for my daily work for long long time. I’ve purchase all versions from v6 to v9 already, but only with Maia I’m having hard times to wait the release to be released

Cheers,
-Tero

By: Andrew Perepelytsya

Andrew Perepelytsya — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:50:45 +0000

Hi Alexey,

‘Slicing’ is great, but still in the domain of code forensics Not trying to win you over with this, but maybe ‘dataflow to usages’ is more helpful? That is, if dataflow is still on the table at all.

Cheers!
Andrew

By: Taras Tielkes

Taras Tielkes — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:24:55 +0000

Alexey, great work.

Can’t wait to get my hands on #10626 and try it out.

By: Alexey Kudravtsev

Alexey Kudravtsev — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:21:05 +0000

Andrew, what do you suggest?
I’ve come across the ‘backward slicing’ and ‘forward slicing’ names for the dataflow to/from actions respectively, see http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~csstmmh2/exe1.html
But I am not sure whether they are any more understandable.