Performance problems with Variable Type Analysis

[Ole Friis Ostergaard <olef@daimi.au.dk>]

Hi!

We're some guys that are trying to use SOOT as part of our thesis
project, and as a part of this we would like to use the Variable Type
Analysis that is already implemented in SOOT and is included in the
distribution.

However, it seems that for even extremely small programs, not using any
JAVA classes except of course indirectly java.lang.Object, SOOT insists
on loading the whole bunch of standard classes and using all this as the
basis for creating a class hierarchy analysis, invoke graph, and the
variable type analysis. The result: We get a lot of useless (from our
point of view) classes analysed, causing waiting times of approximately
3 minutes and memory consumptions in the area of 300 MB for even the
_very_ simplest applications. This is on 1GHz Athlon CPUs running
HotSpot, which effectively renders the Variable Type Analysis unusable
as part of a bigger memory analysis tool.

Ideally, we would like to exclude all classes that we never make use of.
Is there a simple way to do that? Or does anybody have any other
suggestions on how to improve the speed of the process?

Please send me a note if you want examples of the JAVA programs we've
used, etc.

-- 
Ole Friis Østergaard <olef@daimi.au.dk>