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The Smalltalk Graph

Idea: Store Smalltalk code in a Graph database to facilitate analysis and searching. Smalltalk code consists of Methods, Selectors, Variables, Pragma?s, Classes, Packages, Package versions and Configurations.

Use cases

• Search for Smalltalk artefacts
• View a Smalltalk artefact and navigate to related artefacts
• View changes over time of an artefact
• View Developer activity per Package/Configuration over time
• Make it possible to limit the scope of searches to a specific configuration version
• Analyse whether a configuration is valid
• Analyse the compatibility of a package with a configuration version

Possible future use cases:

• Perform code analysis (SmallLint) on configurations and store the results in the Graph
• The Graph database could be used as an Envy like SCM
• Add support for Google Code Search https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75225

Why useful?

• Provides code search facilities similar to Smalltalk image but on all versions of all (open source) Smalltalk code
• Makes analysis of possible compatibility problems much easier.

Validation rules for Configuration versions

• A class can only be defined once
• All superclasses of defined classes must be present
• All extended classes must be defined
• References to global values must exist (warning)
• Messages that are sent must have implementers (warning)

Technical setup

• A graph database ? Neo4j server
• A Smalltalk client for this database CloudforkNeo, uses the REST interface of Neo4j
• Smalltalk functionality to import Monticello packages into the graph
• Smalltalk Web GUI to view/search/analyse the graph
• Neo4j extension plugin to add extra REST services for efficient Graph manipulation and traversing (currently written in Java)

More

• Smalltalk setup