The most recent version of JQuery (4.0 beta) was developed using Eclipse 3.3. JQuery 4.0 is tested in both Eclipse 3.2 and Eclipse 3.3 (Europa). Consult the documentation for more information on requirements.

Release Notes

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• user interface features:
  • added support for hiding regular expression box
  • disabled regular expression filter display by default
  • added an "Open with JQuery" button to most Eclipse context menus (works great!)
  • added JQuery Browser to Show In view menus
  • added Save/Restore perspective!
  • added JQuery supported syntax highlighting (through the ca.ubc.jquery.editor plugin)
  • added a slightly more obvious error message to popup query edit dialog
  • added error message to regular expression filter box
  • added menu item to count query results
  • added an option to the tree browser preferences to disable auto-complete for query editing
• backend and code changes:
  • improved save state by moving more things into XML file instead of raw data files
  • changed constructor names from to actual class names (more like Eclipse)
  • improved API fact generator class
  • refactoring rules files to make management more clear and make a distinction between normal Java predicates and language independent predicates
  • made smaller factbase the standard
  • removed fourth parameter from file locations (not needed after a small tyruba mode definition change)
  • added a fact generator which uses string integers instead of long strings for identifiers. WAY MORE EFFICIENT DATABASE!
  • added getIdentityQuery method to API (essentially just an equals(!this,?T) query)
  • bug where node results weren't counted properly
• bug fixes:
  • fix when changing resources caused view linking to be messed up
  • fix concurrent modification exception when updating resource strategies
  • bug fix which prevented linking to be restored properly for an XML defined view
  • bug which caused views to appear linked even when they had no targets
  • fix queries not being updated when an error occurs during editing (it was always a little annoying when you work hard on a query, click Apply and then lose your changes. This is now fixed)

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• User Interface:
  • added preference page for UI information
  • removed useless "max results" from tyruba preferences
  • forced tree builder to diplsay ana error when query results exceeded the limit
  • unselecting resources in the preferences now uninstalls the resource
  • auto activation for query edit help (pressing , or ; triggers help)
  • better package icon
• Bug fixes
  • cancel query node didn't update results
  • query result counter not counts properly
  • crash using "Add to JQuery factbase" on a project with files with no extension
  • preference pages work better
  • recursive queries update properly
  • views (outline, selection) displaying an error on start up
  • quick views not selecting the element from editing context
• Several code changes

Major changes made to JQuery for this release (there have been countless minor changes/fixes):

• User interface improvements
  • Multiple JQuery browsers
  • Drag and drop support for browsers
  • JQuery view to JQuery view linking.
  • Editor to JQuery view linking
  • Background jobs handle query execution/factbase updates
  • Regular expression filter for every JQuery view
  • Content assistant in edit query dialog
  • Automated Working set creation
  • Multiple item selection and querying in JQuery views
  • Improved query filtering
  • Query popup dialog to assist editing existing queries
  • Tree node save/expand state saved and restored properly
  • JQuery views interact with Eclipse views (ie. Declaration view, JavaDoc view)
  • JQuery supports existing Eclipse operations (see the Eclipse... menu in the JQuery context menu)
• Backend improvements
  • Migrated JQuery to a multi-plugin structure.
  • Pluggable backend allows for different database implementations (see documentation for more details)
  • Improved query rules (support for multiple types in a given query)
  • Pluggable fact generators allows more factbase customization
  • Improved definition file loading
  • Support for multiple Tyruba backends
• JQuery/Eclipse Improvements
  • JQuery support for the Eclipse JDT JavaModel
  • Easier to use preference pages
  • Support for Eclipse 3.3
• Several bug fixes and optimizations

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Compiles/runs in Eclipse 3.2
• A number of smaller bug fixes and patches.
• Replaced TyRuBA engine with latest versions (which has a number important bugfixes causing massive memory leaks).
• Added rudimentary support for Java annotations (this is still preliminary and only partially supported, not all types of annotations are recognized by the parser).
• Some changes to the preference pane:
• new preference: max # results JQuery displays pre query.
• parsing of dependent files now turned off by default (saves memory).
  

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Added minimal support for Java 1.5 (so that at least doesn't crash on 1.5 code)
• Automatically loading dependent source or class files into the database.
• Compile/Run under Eclipse 3.1

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Bugfix: fixed a browser/database inconsistency which sometimes resulted in multiple copies of a node being shown in the browser. 

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Bugfix: insertion of error, bookmark, warning and task facts.

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Added support for parsing and querying Bookmarks, Tasks, Errors, and Warnings.
• Minor changes to tyRuBa backend, also some refactoring done to ease extension of the tool.

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Improved factbase - queries run faster with less memory overhead.
• Fact libraries give the ability to export facts and use them later without reparsing.
• Class file parsing gives the ability to parse and run queries on java bytecode.

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Resolved a bug.
  

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• This release is basically the same as the 3.0.0 release, except that it is Eclipse RC1 compatible.
• Removed use of some deprecated and invalid eclipse APIs.

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Vitural Source Files allow the developer to view and edit scattered code from one view.
• Query Here feature presents the developer with an outline of the results of context specific queries.

October 16, 2003: JQuery_2_0_0b

• This is the long awaited (beta) version of JQuery which uses TyRuBa engine 6.x.
• Due to TyRuBa 6.x factbases are now partially stored on disk resulting in much better memory performance (at the cost of speed when you are using large collections of facts).
• Factbases persist between sessions to cut down on the amount of time required to parse Java files and turn them into facts for the query engine.

Known issues

• When you select the 'show qualified labels' option (because the label data is unavailable) the query tree will become invisible. This option will most likely be removed in future versions since it did not appear to be very useful.

July 7, 2003: JQuery_1_9_6

• Fixed a problem with the update mechanism which was causing the tool to crash when resources changed.

July 4, 2003: JQuery_1_9_5

It's here. JQuery has been given a major overhaul, and the first production version is finally available for download. Much has changed in this new version, so please read the release notes below.

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• To support scalability to larger code bases, JQuery now uses Java Working Sets rather than projects to determine what code gets included in the factbase. Facts are generated for ALL ".java" files in the chosen working set, so when working with a small portion of a large code base you can reduce time (and memory) required to generate the facts by including only a subset of the files (a few packages, for instance.)
  
  
• We have done away with the query editing sash that used to take up the top portion of the view. The query tree itself now takes up the entire view. Each query tree is nested inside its own tab, and multiple query tree tabs can be open simultaneously on the same or different working sets.
  
  
• All queries (top level and sub-queries) are now constructed using a query editing dialog which appears when a new query is created. Existing queries can be edited by double-clicking on the query node, or re-executed to reflect changes to the code base by selecting Re-execute from a query node's pop-up menu. Note that currently, re-executing one query does not re-execute any of its nested queries.
  
  
• The entire view's contents are now saved upon exiting and restored upon re-opening the view/workspace.
  
  
• The generated factbase is now more complete. We included facts about default constructors and separated "calls" facts into 4 subtypes: "methodCall", "constructorCall", "superCall", and "thisCall". See the documentation page for more information about this change.
  
  
• Sub-query menu items have been arranged into categories to decrease clutter and hopefully increase useability.

March 19, 2003

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Added facts about field accesses (reads and writes). The queries "reads(?X,?field,?location)" and "writes(?X,?field,?location)" are now available, where ?X is either a type or a method, ?field is an accessed field, and ?location is the place in the source where the field access takes place. Also included are corresponding results-menu items: Reads/Read by, Writes/Written by, and Accesses/Accessed by (indicating a read OR a write).
  
  
• A new "Sub-query" feature, which allows users to run queries against a selected node in the results tree, and have the results of that query displayed as a sub-tree of the sselected node. The query is written in the same manner as before, but the variable "?THIS" is used in the query when referring to the selected item. When the "Execute Sub-Query" button is pressed, the user is prompted to provide a label for the resulting subtree. The "?THIS" variable may also be used when running regular queries. This gives users the ability to extract one or more nodes from the results tree and create a new browser view from them.
  
  
• When saving queries to disk, the results tree contents are now saved as well, and are restored upon re-opening the file.
  
  
• Added a new "Inverted Heirarchy" menu item for finding a type's ancestors, and an "implements+(?Class,?Interface)" which is true if either ?Class or one of ?Class's superclasses implements ?Interface.

February 28, 2003

Changes made to JQuery for this release:

• Implemeted "incremental building". It used to be that when your source files changed, a full rebuild of JQuery's database had to be executed manually before queries could be made about the updated code. This burden has been eliminated with incremental building. JQuery now updates the rulebase automatically, and cuts down on waiting time drastically by dealing only with the java files that have changed since running the previous query. It also guarantees that any query that is run will return results consistent with the current state of the project. We believe this change makes the new JQuery much more user-friendly than previous versions.
  
  
• Added a pop-up menu containing a list of basic queries. Simply right-clicking anywhere in the text box and selecting a query item from the list will paste the query text into the box. This saves users from having to memorize the syntax of queries available to them. The feature can also be used repeatedly as a tool to help build more complex queries.
  
  
• Created a "Default Queries" mechanism, allowing users to modify a list of pre-saved queries which are automatically opened in separate tabs every time JQuery starts. Included in this release are three such default queries: A basic package browser, a class creations browser, and an interface implemenation browser. To add or remove queries from this list, select "Default Queries Files..." from the JQuery menu. Note that queries must first be saved before they can be added as default queries.
  
  
• A mechanism for including your own Tyruba rules (.rub) files has been added. To include your files, select "Rules Files" from the JQuery menu. Select "Project Rules Files..." to use the rules for the current project or "Global Rules Files" to use the rules file with all projects in the workspace.
  
  
• The "Reload Project" and "Reload All Projects" menu items now only set the rules files out of date, causing them to be reloaded upon running the next query. This only needs to be done if changes are made to a Tyruba rules file included as either a Project Specific or Global Rules File. It is no longer necessary to manually refresh JQuery after making changes to your code.
  
  
• A number of new results-menu queries have been added, including queries for constructors and creators of classes, inherited fields and methods, and type heirarchies.
  
  
• Note: Due to issues with the January 27 release, it has been made unavailable for download. Also note that the field access query (described below) has not been implemented in the new release.

January 27, 2003

The following additions have been implemented:

• The ability to query for field accesses within methods using the query access(?M,?F,?L).  This can be interpreted as "Method ?M accesses (ie: reads/writes) field ?F at code location ?L.
• Queries involving variables whose types are not declared within the scope of the project can now be made successfully, and the code for these variables accessed directly from the query results.  

November 14, 2002

Several changes were made in this release:

• Added a progress monitor while generating facts.
• The "Result is a list" checkbox was removed. Any variable that is bound to a list is now automatically expanded into a a tree structure.
• Added primitive types. The primitive(?P) query binds ?P to the primitive types.

November 5, 2002

This is the first public release and is still highly experimental. The fact generation code underwent a major redesign in this release. This redesign has made the queries run much faster and provided the potential for a richer set of query terms. However, not all the query terms have been re-implemented yet and there may still be holes in the ones that are implemented (eg. the calls query does not find calls to the default constructor). Also, incremental updates of the fact base has not yet been implemented in the new design. Facts for a project will be generated the first time a query is run against that project. This may take a little while, but queries run much, much faster this way. Use the "reload rules" button to generate the rule base again after making changes to your code.

October 9, 2002

This is an early, experimental version which is discussed in the paper "Navigating and Querying Code Without Getting Lost".