Dynamic metrics for java

  • Authors:

  • Bruno Dufour;Karel Driesen;Laurie Hendren;Clark Verbrugge

  • Affiliations:

  • McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada;McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada;McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada;McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

  • Venue:
  • OOPSLA '03 Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programing, systems, languages, and applications
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

In order to perform meaningful experiments in optimizing compilation and run-time system design, researchers usually rely on a suite of benchmark programs of interest to the optimization technique under consideration. Programs are described as numeric, memory-intensive, concurrent, or object-oriented, based on a qualitative appraisal, in some cases with little justification. We believe it is beneficial to quantify the behaviour of programs with a concise and precisely defined set of metrics, in order to make these intuitive notions of program behaviour more concrete and subject to experimental validation. We therefore define and measure a set of unambiguous, dynamic, robust and architecture-independent metrics that can be used to categorize programs according to their dynamic behaviour in five areas: size, data structure, memory use, concurrency, and polymorphism. A framework computing some of these metrics for Java programs is presented along with specific results demonstrating how to use metric data to understand a program's behaviour, and both guide and evaluate compiler optimizations.