Generating incremental implementations of object-set queries

High-level query constructs help greatly improve the clarity of programs and the productivity of programmers, and are being introduced to increasingly more languages. However, the use of highlevel queries in programming languages can come at a cost to program efficiency, because these queries are expensive and ma be computed repeatedly on slightly changed inputs. For efficient computation in practical applications, a powerful method is neede to incrementally maintain query results with respect to updates to query parameters.This paper describes a general and powerful method for automatically generating incremental implementations of high-level queries over objects and sets in object-oriented programs, where a query may contain arbitrary set enumerators, field selectors, and additional conditions. The method can handle any update to object fields and addition and removal of set elements, and generate coordinated maintenance code and invocation mechanisms to ensure that query results are computed correctly and efficiently. Our implementation and experimental results for example queries and updates confirm the effectiveness of the method.