Mailing-List: contact geronimo-dev-help@incubator.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: geronimo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 10:11:33 -0500
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Subject: [bcel] Is anyone a BCEL expert?
From: Dain Sundstrom <dain@coredevelopers.net>
To: geronimo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <EA8D3CAC-D4B2-11D7-8482-000393DB559A@coredevelopers.net>

We are going to need some BCEL code which varies from simple to quite 
complex.  If you are an expert or eager to learn, here is what we need 
(from simple to complex):


Interface proxy generator -- This is a copy of java.reflection.Proxy.  
Why do we need a copy?  Well I think it is a good starting point for 
the rest of the stuff, and I know we can do it better.  I would like 
the proxy generator to be able to generate class names that have some 
meaning other then Proxy$24, and I think we can write code that this 
faster.


Dynamic instance factory -- One slow thing we will run into with the 
proxy generator above is normally the core of the generator looks like 
this:

	Object getProxy(Class[] interfaces) {
		Class clazz = getProxyClass(interfaces);
		Constructor constructor = clazz.getConstructor(null);
		constructor.newInstance(null);
	}

Jeremy and I did some benchmarks the other day and the call to 
newInstance on constructor is surprisingly expensive (the rest can be 
optimized out).  The fastest way we found to create a class was to 
generate the byte code for an instance factory.  The factory would be 
the equivalent of this Java code:

	public class MyProxyInstanceFactory implements InstanceFactory {
		public Object newInstance() {
			return new MyProxy();
		}
	}

So the line newInstance line becomes:

	InstanceFactory factory = getInstanceFactory(clazz);
	return factory.newInstance();

Notice this is not using a reflection call, it would raw byte code to 
create a new instance the normal java way and has the exact same cost 
as calling an interface method (duh, it is a call on an interface 
method).  This is another flexibility versus speed trade off.  To keep 
the factory simple, it can only create classes with no arguments.  I 
used beclifier to do this, but I really don't understand BECL, so I 
would not want to commit it.


Abstract class proxy generator -- We need this for the CMP 2.x 
implementation.  In CMP 2.x the bean provider writes an abstract class 
and we generate a concrete sub class.  I think the best way to 
implement this, is to extend the interface proxy generator above, to 
allow one of the specified interfaces to be a class.  When it detects a 
real class, the proxy generator would generate a subclass of the class 
and implement any abstract methods by delegating them to an 
InvocationHandler.


Field interception -- This will make CMP 1.x much easier to implement.  
In CMP 1.x, the bean provider writes a concrete class where the 
persistent fields are simple public fields of the class.  If we can 
replace all byte code that access these fields with a call to the 
InvocationHandler, it will make CMP 1.x look like CMP 2.x.  This 
technique is also used by JDO so it will make our JDO implementation 
(when we get to that) easier.


This should be a very fun project.  I'd do it myself, but I've got too 
many other things on my plate right now.

-dain

/*************************
  * Dain Sundstrom
  * Partner
  * Core Developers Network
  *************************/