Patent ID: 7725505

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for measuring the memory consumption difference between two objects in an object-oriented programming environment comprising: processing program code in a processor to perform the operations of: analyzing relationships between objects within a network of objects to determine an object network structure; generating object graph data representing the object network structure, the object graph data including nodes representing objects and references representing relationships between objects; building sub-graphs by removing all incoming references to each of two nodes, resulting in a first sub-graph associated with a first of the two nodes and a second sub-graph associated with a second of the two nodes, each sub-graph including nodes representing objects and references representing relationships being objects; summing a first amount of memory consumed by the first node associated with the first sub-graph and a second amount of memory consumed by the second node associated with the second sub-graph; and calculating the memory consumption difference between the first memory consumption amount and the second memory consumption amount to determine a memory consumption difference between the two nodes.