Real world evaluation of aspect-oriented software development : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Software development has improved over the past decade with the rise in the popularity of the Object-Oriented (OO) development approach. However, software projects continue to grow in complexity and continue to have alarmingly low rates of success. Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is touted to be one solution to this software development problem. It shows promise of reducing programming complexity, making software more flexible and more amenable to change. The central concept introduced by AOP is the aspect. An aspect is used to modularise crosscutting concerns in a similar fashion to the way classes modularise business concerns. A crosscutting concern cannot be modularised in approaches such as OO because the code to realise the concern must be spread throughout the module (e.g. a tracing concent is implemented by adding code to every method in a system). AOP also introduces join points, pointcuts, and advice which are used with aspects to capture crosscutting concerns so they can be localised in a modular unit. OO took approximately 20 years to become a mainstream development approach. AOP was only invented in 1997. This project considers whether AOP is ready for commercial adoption. This requires analysis of the AOP implementations available, tool support, design processes, testing tools, standards, and support infrastructure. Only when AOP is evaluated across all these criteria can it be established whether it is ready to be used in commercial projects. Moreover, if companies are to invest time and money into adopting AOP, they must be aware of the benefits and risks associated with its adoption. This project attempts to quantify the potential benefits in adopting AOP, as well as identifying areas of risk. SolNet Solutions Ltd, an Information Technology (IT) company in Wellington, New Zealand, is used in this study as a target environment for integration of aspects into a commercial development process. SolNet is in the business of delivering large scale enterprise Java applications. To assist in this process they have developed a Common Services Architecture (CSA) containing components that can be reused to reduce risk and cost to clients. However, the CSA is complicated and SolNet have identified aspects as a potential solution to decrease the complexity. Aspects were found to bring substantial improvement to the Service Layer of SolNet. applications, including substantial reductions in complexity and size. This reduces the cost and time of development, as well as the risk associated with the projects. Moreover, the CSA was used in a more consistent fashion making the system easier to understand and maintain, and several crosscutting concerns were modularised as part of a reusable aspect library which could eventually form part of their CSA. It was found that AOP is approaching commercial readiness. However, more work is needed on defining standards for aspect languages and modelling of design elements. The current solutions in this area are commercially viable, but would greatly benefit from a standardised approach. Aspect systems can be difficult to test and the effect of the weaving process on Java serialisation requires further investigation

Unwoven Aspect Analysis

Various languages and tools supporting advanced separation of concerns (such as aspect-oriented programming) provide a software developer with the ability to separate functional and non-functional programmatic intentions. Once these separate pieces of the software have been specified, the tools automatically handle interaction points between separate modules, relieving the developer of this chore and permitting more understandable, maintainable code. Many approaches have left traditional compiler analysis and optimization until after the composition has been performed; unfortunately, analyses performed after composition cannot make use of the logical separation present in the original program. Further, for modular systems that can be configured with different sets of features, testing under every possible combination of features may be necessary and time-consuming to avoid bugs in production software. To solve this testing problem, we investigate a feature-aware compiler analysis that runs during composition and discovers features strongly independent of each other. When the their independence can be judged, the number of feature combinations that must be separately tested can be reduced. We develop this approach and discuss our implementation. We look forward to future programming languages in two ways: we implement solutions to problems that are conceptually aspect-oriented but for which current aspect languages and tools fail. We study these cases and consider what language designs might provide even more information to a compiler. We describe some features that such a future language might have, based on our observations of current language deficiencies and our experience with compilers for these languages

Fixed-Mobile Convergence in the 5G era: From Hybrid Access to Converged Core

The availability of different paths to communicate to a user or device introduces several benefits, from boosting enduser performance to improving network utilization. Hybrid access is a first step in enabling convergence of mobile and fixed networks, however, despite traffic optimization, this approach is limited as fixed and mobile are still two separate core networks inter-connected through an aggregation point. On the road to 5G networks, the design trend is moving towards an aggregated network, where different access technologies share a common anchor point in the core. This enables further network optimization in addition to hybrid access, examples are userspecific policies for aggregation and improved traffic balancing across different accesses according to user, network, and service context. This paper aims to discuss the ongoing work around hybrid access and network convergence by Broadband Forum and 3GPP. We present some testbed results on hybrid access and analyze some primary performance indicators such as achievable data rates, link utilization for aggregated traffic and session setup latency. We finally discuss the future directions for network convergence to enable future scenarios with enhanced configuration capabilities for fixed and mobile convergence.Comment: to appear in IEEE Networ

Curated routes: the project of developing experiential tracks in sub-urban landscape

The Curated Routes project reflects on the visiting routes’ ability to make apparent the internal characteristics of urban environments. The project’s name allude to the intellectual function of curation and the materiality of routes. Curate deals with the practice of arranging material –tangible or intangible- in a way that a new understanding of an area is revealed. The word routes refers to the linear associations that link places and guide movement. The Curated Routes aim to reinforce the development of bonding ties between people and urban environments by re-constructing the way we visit and explore a place. The overall goal of the project is to outline the conceptual guidelines of a visitors’ guide that could later be used for the development of the informatics model. The project follows the methodology that the context-aware routes apply, though particular attention is paid to the second phase of the process where an innovative approach is applied. The introduction of the “chronotope” filters enables us to “knit” the terrestrial route to a range of informative storylines, and hence to develop different interpretations of an urban environment

Role-play and the discussion of the controversial issues during teacher training: teaching practices in favor of a Sustainable Development?

In a society that is constantly changing and deeply marked by advances in science and technology, it is essential to invest in a training that values personal and social development, as well as the understanding of the interaction Science-Technology-Society-Environment (CTSA). A science education focused on knowledge and understanding of science and technology and its role in our daily lives allows individuals to engage and understand these discussions on these issues, as well as their social implications. Therefore, it is crucial to provide students with teaching-learning situations that can enable them for a more reflected and critical participation in society, that are likely to trigger an increase in cognitive, communicative, social and democratic processes, paving the way for scientific literacy and a participatory and democratic citizenship. In this social context, the study of controversial issues of social-scientific and social-environmental nature, it is constituted as a rich learning context as they are associated with existing differences between the different actors involved in the discussion, regarding the assessment of the validity and credibility of the scientific issues that are involved. It is the case, for example, of differences related to some practices developed by man that can endanger our health or the environment. For Sadler, Barab and Scott (2007), a social-scientific reasoning should involve: the recognition of the complexity of the issues under study, the analysis of the issues in their multiple perspectives, bear in mind the notion that the issues are under investigation and doubt the potentially tendentious information. In this context, these issues cannot be simplified but seen in all their complexity (in all dimensions involved). Based on these assumptions, it was developed an investigation-action with future teachers and educators in order to access the potentialities and limitations of the discussion of socio-scientific and socio-environmental issues using the role-playing in environmental education classes. The activity was focused on a current environmental problem in our society – the construction of dams – raising the awareness of students about the risks and the interests that are involved and in which participate different groups of society, like scientists, environmentalists, politicians and economists. If the seriousness of the environmental problems and the fast rhythm that current societies live ask for an intervention and awareness in the environmental area, in a perspective of continuity of life and sustainable balance, it is essential to reach the population from which young people are part of and, consequently, it is the school’s responsibility to make a statement in this sense. The obtained data through the activity assessment questionnaire, the interview, field notes and the final reflection carried out by work groups helped confirm that this didactic experience enabled the development of many skills related to: a) the substantive knowledge; b) didactic knowledge; c) reasoning; d) communication; and d) attitudes. Some of the negative aspects of the performed dynamic were related to how the teacher managed the discussion but it was also pointed out the less positive aspects the communicative skills and the team work skills evidenced by students. However, as it was observed in other studies about the same issue, not all groups were able to take a decision regarding the feasibility and reasonableness of more investments for the construction of dams in our country, based on the example of the Alqueva dam. In this type of activity it is difficult to reach a consensus among all group members. There are many aspects to consider and the more awareness students take in relation to the factors involved in the problem and its implications, the more confused they become. The most important aspect is to inform the students of the various dimensions involved and enable them to access accurate and reliable information.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Tracking the History and Evolution of Entities: Entity-centric Temporal Analysis of Large Social Media Archives

How did the popularity of the Greek Prime Minister evolve in 2015? How did the predominant sentiment about him vary during that period? Were there any controversial sub-periods? What other entities were related to him during these periods? To answer these questions, one needs to analyze archived documents and data about the query entities, such as old news articles or social media archives. In particular, user-generated content posted in social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, can be seen as a comprehensive documentation of our society, and thus meaningful analysis methods over such archived data are of immense value for sociologists, historians and other interested parties who want to study the history and evolution of entities and events. To this end, in this paper we propose an entity-centric approach to analyze social media archives and we define measures that allow studying how entities were reflected in social media in different time periods and under different aspects, like popularity, attitude, controversiality, and connectedness with other entities. A case study using a large Twitter archive of four years illustrates the insights that can be gained by such an entity-centric and multi-aspect analysis.Comment: This is a preprint of an article accepted for publication in the International Journal on Digital Libraries (2018