Object validity and effects

The object-oriented community is paying increasing attention to techniques for object instance encapsulation and alias protection. Formal techniques for modular verification of programs at the level of objects are being developed hand in hand with type systems and static analysis techniques for restricting the structure of runtime object graphs. Ownership type systems have provided a sound basis for such structural restrictions by being able to statically represent an extensible object ownership hierarchy. However, such structural restrictions may potentially have limitations on cases when more flexible reference structures are desired. In this thesis, we present a different encapsulation technique, called Effect Encapsulation, which confines side effects rather than object references. With relaxed restriction on reference structure, it is able to express certain common object-oriented patterns which cannot be expressed in Ownership Types. From this basis, we also describe a model of Object Validity --- a framework for reasoning about object invariants. Such a framework can track the effect and dependency of method calls on object invariants within an ownership-based type system, even in the presence of re-entrant calls. Moreover, we present an access control technique for protecting object instances. Combined with context variance, the resulting type system allows for a more flexible and useful access control policy, hence is capable of expressing more object-oriented patterns

Object validity and effects

The object-oriented community is paying increasing attention to techniques for object instance encapsulation and alias protection. Formal techniques for modular verification of programs at the level of objects are being developed hand in hand with type systems and static analysis techniques for restricting the structure of runtime object graphs. Ownership type systems have provided a sound basis for such structural restrictions by being able to statically represent an extensible object ownership hierarchy. However, such structural restrictions may potentially have limitations on cases when more flexible reference structures are desired.In this thesis, we present a different encapsulation technique, called Effect Encapsulation, which confines side effects rather than object references. With relaxed restriction on reference structure, it is able to express certain common object-oriented patterns which cannot be expressed in Ownership Types. From this basis, we also describe a model of Object Validity --- a framework for reasoning about object invariants. Such a framework can track the effect and dependency of method calls on object invariants within an ownership-based type system, even in the presence of re-entrant calls. Moreover, we present an access control technique for protecting object instances. Combined with context variance, the resulting type system allows for a more flexible and useful access control policy, hence is capable of expressing more object-oriented patterns