Form: a framework for creating views of program executions

Form is a framework used to construct tools for analyzing the runtime behavior of standalone and distributed software systems. The architecture of Form is based on the event broadcast and pipe and filter styles. In the implementation of this architecture, execution profiles may be generated from standalone or distributed systems. The profile data is subsequently broadcast by Form to one or more views. Each view is a tool used to support program understanding or other software development activities. The authors describe the Form architecture and implementation, as well as a tool that was built using Form. This tool profiles Java-based distributed systems and generates UML sequence diagrams to describe their execution. We also present a case study that shows how this tool was used to extract sequence diagrams from a three-tiered EJB-based distributed application.