Formalization and Application of a Unifying Model for Name Management

Abstract

Name management is among the most basic foundations of software engineering, since so many software engineering tools and techniques fundamentally depend upon manipulation of names and the entities that they represent. While many individual tools and techniques have included their own specialized, often elaborate and idiosyncratic, approaches to name management, no unifying models for name management currently exist. As a result, the individual approaches are frequently complex and error-prone, while attempts to integrate collections of software engineering tools or techniques are often impeded by the inconsistency and incompatibility of the name management approaches used in the individual components of the collection. In this paper we consider some examples in which name management problems complicate software engineering activities. In particular, we focus on context control-related problems that often occur during software development. We then outline a unifying model of name manag...