Exporting results in a custom XML would be nice too. I can imagine an XML result export wizard, where one defines the tag names and structure (a template), and SemmleCode automatically outputs the XML where the actual results are embedded based on the node template.

Something like this:

from ...
where ...
select c, n

==>

<root>
  <results />
</root>

results =>

<result>
 <c>{c}</c>
 <n>{n}</n>
</result>

Something like XSLT At a first stage, just enable exporting in ANY XML format, one always can write an XSLT and transform to any needed format

Hi Mathieu,

no, I currently don't have any specific application for XML results in mind, it's just that I'm brainstorming and from my point of view, having access to XML would definitely boost the spectrum of things one can achieve with SemmleCode.

Say, one could track the development of code metrics over time ("damn, the core package has worse metrics after the last refactoring!!!"). For this, one would want to store the results as a momentary snapshot of the current state of the code. On the other hand, if you implement querying over some particular revision in the VCS, it would become unnecessary...

Or, generating reports for the management: "see, boss, this code is so bad, we need more resources on this!!!"

Or, if you are deciding whether you (as a consultant) want to take over a hopeless project, you don't even need to see the code - you just send the query, they run it on their code, and send you the results in XML back - so you can make a decision without ever having a look at their code.