Patent ID: 7137104

Claim:
A method on an information processing device for reporting any behavioral differences after composing two or more class hierarchies 1 and 2 with associated applications A 1 and A 2 respectively, the method on the information processing device comprising: creating a composed hierarchy 3 by analyzing a hierarchy 1 and a hierarchy 2 ; creating well-defined methods and/or fields in one or more classes of the hierarchy 3 by analyzing the hierarchy 1 and the hierarchy 2 and user-supplied information; associating a definition of a method M in a class D in a hierarchy with each executed call to a definition of a method M′ in a class C in the hierarchy where class D is a subtype of class C in a behavior in the hierarchy for each of an application A 1 and an application A 2 , wherein the method M and the method M′ have an identical signature; testing if two behaviors across the hierarchy 1 and the hierarchy 3 are different by comparing a behavior B 3 of the application A 1 in the composed hierarchy 3 with a behavior B 1 of the application A 1 in the hierarchy 1 and reporting any differences therebetween; and testing if two behaviors across the hierarchy 2 and the hierarchy 3 are different by comparing a behavior B 4 of the application A 2 in the composed hierarchy 3 with a behavior B 2 of the application A 2 in the hierarchy 2 and reporting any differences therebetween.