A Hierarchical Clustering Based Approach in Aspect Mining

A Hierarchical Clustering Based Approach in Aspect Mining Clustering is a division of data into groups of similar objects. Aspect mining is a process that tries to identify crosscutting concerns in existing software systems. The goal is to refactor the existing systems to use aspect oriented programming, in order to make them easier to maintain and to evolve. The aim of this paper is to present a new hierarchical clustering based approach in aspect mining. For this purpose we propose HAC algorithm (Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering in aspect mining). Clustering is used in order to identify crosscutting concerns. We evaluate the obtained results from the aspect mining point of view, based on two quality measures that we have previously introduced and a newly defined one. The proposed approach is compared with other similar existing approaches in aspect mining and two case studies are also reported

TOOL SUPPORT FOR CAPTURING THE ESSENCE OF A CONCERN IN SOURCE CODE

Software evolves constantly to adapt to changing user needs. As it evolves, it becomes progressively harder to understand due to accumulation of code changes, increasing code size, and the introduction of complex code dependencies. As a result, it becomes harder to maintain, exposing the software to potential bugs and degradation of code quality. High maintenance costs and diminished opportunities for software reusability and portability lead to reduced return on investment, increasing the likelihood of the software product being discarded or replaced. Nevertheless, we believe that there is value in legacy software due to the amount of intellectual efforts that have been invested in it. To extend its value, we utilize the common practice of identifying the pieces of code relevant to a given concern. Identifying relevant code is a manual process and relies on domain and code expertise. This makes it difficult to scale to large and complex code. In this thesis, we propose several automated approaches for capturing the essential code that represents a concern of interest. We utilize dynamic program analysis of execution traces to identify a relevant code subset. Information retrieval techniques are then utilized to improve the accuracy of the capture, refine the process, and verify the results

Metrics for Aspect Mining Visualization

Aspect oriented programming has over the last decade become the subject of intense research within the domain of software engineering. Aspect mining, which is concerned with identification of cross cutting concerns in legacy software, is an important part of this domain. Aspect refactoring takes the identified cross cutting concerns and converts these into new software constructs called aspects. Software that have been transformed using this process becomes more modularized and easier to comprehend and maintain. The first attempts at mining for aspects were dominated by manual searching and parsing through source code using simple tools. More sophisticated techniques have since emerged including evaluation of execution traces, code clone detection, program slicing, dynamic analysis, and use of various clustering techniques. The focus of most studies has been to maximize aspect mining performance measured by various metrics including those of aspect mining precision and recall. Other metrics have been developed and used to compare the various aspect mining techniques with each other. Aspect mining automation and presentation of aspect mining results has received less attention. Automation of aspect mining and presentation of results conducive to aspect refactoring is important if this research is going to be helpful to software developers. This research showed that aspect mining can be automated. A tool was developed which performed automated aspect mining and visualization of identified cross cutting concerns. This research took a different approach to aspect mining than most aspect mining research by recognizing that many different categories of cross cutting concerns exist and by taking this into account in the mining process. Many different aspect mining techniques have been developed over time, some of which are complementary. This study was different than most aspect mining research in that multiple complementary aspect mining algorithms was used in the aspect mining and visualization process

Tool-supported identification of functional concerns in object-oriented code

Concern identification aims to find the implementation of a functional concern in existing source code. In this work, concerns are described, using the Hierarchic Concern Model, as gray-boxes containing subconcerns, inputs, and outputs. The inputs and outputs are used as concern seeds to identify data-oriented abstractions of concern implementations, called concern skeletons. The identification approach is based on context free language reachability and supported by a tool, called CoDEx

Understanding Design Patterns Density with Aspects: A Case Study in JHotDraw using AspectJ

International audienceDesign patterns offer solutions to common engineering prob- lems in programs [1]. In particular, they shape the evolution of program elements. However, their implementations tend to vanish in the code: thus it is hard to spot them and to understand their impact. The prob- lem becomes even more difficult with a "high density of pattern": then the program becomes easy to evolve in the direction allowed by patterns but hard to change [2]. Aspect languages offer new means to modular- ize elements. Implementations of object-oriented design patterns with AspectJ have been proposed [3]. We aim at testing the scalability of such solutions in the JHotDraw framework. We first explore the impact of density on pattern implementation. We show how AspectJ helps to reduce this impact. This unveils the principles of aspects and AspectJ to control pattern density

06302 Abstracts Collection -- Aspects For Legacy Applications

From 26.07.06 to 29.07.06, the Dagstuhl Seminar 06302 ``Aspects For Legacy Applications\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

An illustrative example of refactoring object-oriented source code with aspect-oriented mechanisms

This paper describes a refactoring process that transforms a Java source code base into a functionally equivalent AspectJ source code base. The process illustrates the use of a collection of refactorings for aspect-oriented source code, covering the extraction of scattered implementation elements to aspects, the internal reorganization of the extracted aspects and the extraction of commonalities to super-aspects.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) - POSC/EIA/60189/200