Patent ID: 7165245

Claim:
A method comprising: pruning local graphs representing local problems, the local problems corresponding to separately compilable components in a software program, each of the local graphs having edges and vertices, each edge having a transfer function, each vertex having a value, values of each of the local graph forming a lattice under a partial ordering wherein pruning the local graphs comprising: associating a use attribute to each one of the vertices in each of the local graphs, the use attribute being asserted for each vertex reachable from a named vertex; associating an affect attribute to each one of the vertices in each of the local graphs, the affect attribute is asserted for a vertex if a named vertex is reachable from the former vertex and pre-solving a subgraph of each of the local graphs, the subgraph including subgraph edges, each of the subgraph edges connecting a tail vertex to a head vertex, the tail vertex having a negated use attribute.