Ownership and Immutability Inference for UML-Based Object Access Control

Abstract

We propose a mechanism for object access control which is based on the UML. Specifically, we propose use of ownership and immutability constraints on UML associations and verification of these constraints through reverse engineering. These constraints inherently support software design principles, and impose requirements on the implementation that may help prevent serious program flaws. We propose implementation-level models for ownership and immutability that capture well the meaning of these concepts in design, and we develop novel static ownership and immutability inference analyses. We perform an empirical investigation on several small-to-large Java programs. The results indicate that the inference analyses are precise and practical. Therefore, the analyses can be integrated in reverse engineering tools and can help support effective reasoning about software quality and security.