LiveCompare 2.2 will ship with the first version of our Java Impact Analysis (JIA) functionality.  The functionality is completely integrated into LiveCompare in the form of new administration objects for managing the upload of Java archives to the LiveCompare server, a new action that implements the JIA functionality and a report structure and presentation that's based on the standard Javadoc format.

Several scenarios are supported:

• Reverse engineer one or more Java class files/archives
• Compare Java class files/archives
• Understand the impact of changes between Java platforms on your custom code

The last of these is probably the most interesting.  By first comparing two versions of the Java platform we can find the changes that are then analyzed in the context of your custom code.  For example, if you extend a platform class and that class is changed from one verison to the next then it's likely your custom code will need to be revised.

While we're obviously targeting the functionality at SAP's Java stack, the underlying comparison and impact analysis works no matter what Java platform you're using. As a test of the comparison functionality I compared the 1.4.2 and 1.6.0_u11 JDKs.  The compressed runtime class archives weigh in at 26MB and 49MB respectively.  The decompression, loading of class files, comparison and reporting takes about 20mins in its current form.  Approximately 190K items were compared (this includes packages, classes and methods).  62K were the same - that is unchanged between the two JDK versions; 2K were different; 25K were unique to the 1.4.2 release; and 100K were unique to the 1.6.0_u11 release.  LiveCompare's comparison report files consumed 55MB of diskspace and produced 29K files.

Here's a sample of the LiveCompare output following the Javadoc standard format:

I'll write more as the functionality develops.  Comments welcomed.