Enforcing Behavioral Constraints in Evolving Aspect-Oriented Programs

Reasoning, specification, and verification of Aspect-Oriented (AO) programs presents unique challenges especially as such programs evolve over time. Components, base-code and aspects alike, may be easily added, removed, interchanged, or presently unavailable at unpredictable frequencies. Consequently, modular reasoning of such programs is highly attractive as it enables tractable evolution, otherwise necessitating that the entire program be reexamined each time a component is changed. It is well known, however, that modular reasoning about AO programs is difficult. In this paper, we present our ongoing work in constructing a rely-guarantee style reasoning system for the Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) paradigm, adopting a trace-based approach to deal with the plug-n-play nature inherent to these programs, thus easing AOP evolution

A Systematic Aspect-Oriented Refactoring and Testing Strategy, and its Application to JHotDraw

Aspect oriented programming aims at achieving better modularization for a system's crosscutting concerns in order to improve its key quality attributes, such as evolvability and reusability. Consequently, the adoption of aspect-oriented techniques in existing (legacy) software systems is of interest to remediate software aging. The refactoring of existing systems to employ aspect-orientation will be considerably eased by a systematic approach that will ensure a safe and consistent migration. In this paper, we propose a refactoring and testing strategy that supports such an approach and consider issues of behavior conservation and (incremental) integration of the aspect-oriented solution with the original system. The strategy is applied to the JHotDraw open source project and illustrated on a group of selected concerns. Finally, we abstract from the case study and present a number of generic refactorings which contribute to an incremental aspect-oriented refactoring process and associate particular types of crosscutting concerns to the model and features of the employed aspect language. The contributions of this paper are both in the area of supporting migration towards aspect-oriented solutions and supporting the development of aspect languages that are better suited for such migrations.Comment: 25 page

Mixing of Join Point Interfaces and Feature-Oriented Programming for Modular Software Product Line

Feature-oriented programming (FOP) and aspect-oriented programming (AOP) focus on to modularize incremental classes behavior and crosscutting concerns, respectively, for software evolution. So, these software development approaches represent advanced paradigms for a modular software product lines production. Thereby, a FOP and AOP symbiosis would permit reaching pros and cons of both approaches. FOP permits a modular re nement of classes collaboration for software product lines (SPL), an adequate approach to represent named heterogeneous crosscutting concerns. FOP works on changes of di erent functionality pieces for which to de ne join points is not a simple task. Similarly, AOP structurally modularizes in a re ned manner homogeneous crosscutting concerns. Since traditional AOP like AspectJ presents implicit dependencies and strong coupling between classes and aspects, and the Join Point Interface JPI ap-proach solves these classic AOP issues, this article presents JPI Feature Modules for the FOP + JPI SPL components modularization, i.e., collaboration of classes, aspects, and join point interfaces along with their evolution, for a SPL transparent implementation in a FOP + JPI context. In addition, this article shows JPI Feature Modules of a case study to highlight mutual bene ts of FOP and JPI approaches for a modular SPL software conception

FOAL 2004 Proceedings: Foundations of Aspect-Oriented Languages Workshop at AOSD 2004

Aspect-oriented programming is a paradigm in software engineering and FOAL logos courtesy of Luca Cardelli programming languages that promises better support for separation of concerns. The third Foundations of Aspect-Oriented Languages (FOAL) workshop was held at the Third International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development in Lancaster, UK, on March 23, 2004. This workshop was designed to be a forum for research in formal foundations of aspect-oriented programming languages. The call for papers announced the areas of interest for FOAL as including, but not limited to: semantics of aspect-oriented languages, specification and verification for such languages, type systems, static analysis, theory of testing, theory of aspect composition, and theory of aspect translation (compilation) and rewriting. The call for papers welcomed all theoretical and foundational studies of foundations of aspect-oriented languages. The goals of this FOAL workshop were to: � Make progress on the foundations of aspect-oriented programming languages. � Exchange ideas about semantics and formal methods for aspect-oriented programming languages. � Foster interest within the programming language theory and types communities in aspect-oriented programming languages. � Foster interest within the formal methods community in aspect-oriented programming and the problems of reasoning about aspect-oriented programs. The papers at the workshop, which are included in the proceedings, were selected frompapers submitted by researchers worldwide. Due to time limitations at the workshop, not all of the submitted papers were selected for presentation. FOAL also welcomed an invited talk by James Riely (DePaul University), the abstract of which is included below. The workshop was organized by Gary T. Leavens (Iowa State University), Ralf L?ammel (CWI and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam), and Curtis Clifton (Iowa State University). The program committee was chaired by L?ammel and included L?ammel, Leavens, Clifton, Lodewijk Bergmans (University of Twente), John Tang Boyland (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), William R. Cook (University of Texas at Austin), Tzilla Elrad (Illinois Institute of Technology), Kathleen Fisher (AT&T Labs�Research), Radha Jagadeesan (DePaul University), Shmuel Katz (Technion�Israel Institute of Technology), Shriram Krishnamurthi (Brown University), Mira Mezini (Darmstadt University of Technology), Todd Millstein (University of California, Los Angeles), Benjamin C. Pierce (University of Pennsylvania), Henny Sipma (Stanford University), Mario S?udholt ( ?Ecole des Mines de Nantes), and David Walker (Princeton University). We thank the organizers of AOSD 2004 for hosting the workshop

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications