Imagix 4D User Guide |
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Analyzing Your Java Code
While Imagix 4D can collect information from a number of software artifacts in your system, the most significant of these are your source code files themselves. The process of analyzing these source files is handled by the Imagix 4D analyzers. The C/C++ analyzer is described in an earlier section. Here, the analyzer for Java code is described.
The Imagix 4D Java analyzer operates much like a compiler. Like a compiler, it does a full semantic parsing of your source files, analyzing all the symbols in your code. But whereas a compiler generates object files which get built into an executable by the linker, the Imagix 4D analyzers generate data files which are loaded and integrated with the other datafiles by the Imagix 4D database.
The Imagix 4D Java analyzer supports the Second Edition and Third Edition of the Java specification. It can analyze Java source files, class files, and jar files. From class files, it extracts only declarative information, and not method bodies or initializer expressions. If a jar file is specified as input, then the analyzer extracts declarative information for all class files in the jar file. This is true for uncompressed and zlib-compressed class files in the jar files. No other compressions are supported.
The Imagix 4D analyzer is a stand-alone executable, separate from the Imagix 4D database / user interface. It can be invoked from within the Imagix 4D user interface, or separately from a command line.