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

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

JPI Feature Models: Exploring a JPI and FOP Symbiosis for Software Modeling

Looking for a complete modular software development paradigm, this article presents Join Point Interface JPI Feature Models, in the context of a JPI and Feature-Oriented Programming FOP symbiosis paradigm. Therefore, this article describes pros and cons of JPI and FOP approaches for the modular software and software product line production, respective; and highlights the benefits of this mixing proposal; in particular, the JPI Feature Model benefits for a high-level software product line modeling. As an application example, this article applies JPI Features Models on a classic FOP example already modeled using a previous aspect-oriented feature model proposal. Main goals of this application are to visualize traditional feature models preserved components such alternative and optional feature sets and optional and mandatory features as well as special features associations (cross-tree constraints), and differences and advantages with respect to previous research works about extending feature model to support aspect-oriented modeling principles

An Approach Based on Maintainability Criteria for Building Aspect-Oriented Software Design Model

Software modeling is an important activity for maintenance since it can facilitate the software comprehension as well as the understanding of its activities towards evolution, correction and adaptation. In this sense, maintainability and its subcharacteristics as presented in the ISO/IEC 9126 standard should be incorporated 0to the artifacts produced in the modeling activity aiming at designing software with characteristics that render its maintenance less costly. Especially in non-trivial software, such as those that are aspect-oriented, the research on maintenance process considering it during the software development is remarkable. These categories of software aim at maintainability and reusability since they provide the separation of concerns. Thus, seeking to reduce the transition effort to the artifacts generated during the Aspect-Oriented Software Development among the different abstraction levels, this paper presents a proposal of maintainability criteria for building aspect-oriented software design models based on the Maintainability Criteria for Implementation Models, on the aSideML language modeling conventions and on the ISO/IEC 9126 standard

A practical approach to goal modelling for time-constrained projects

Goal modelling is a well known rigorous method for analysing problem rationale and developing requirements. Under the pressures typical of time-constrained projects its benefits are not accessible. This is because of the effort and time needed to create the graph and because reading the results can be difficult owing to the effects of crosscutting concerns. Here we introduce an adaptation of KAOS to meet the needs of rapid turn around and clarity. The main aim is to help the stakeholders gain an insight into the larger issues that might be overlooked if they make a premature start into implementation. The method emphasises the use of obstacles, accepts under-refined goals and has new methods for managing crosscutting concerns and strategic decision making. It is expected to be of value to agile as well as traditional processes

Developing a Generic Debugger for Advanced-Dispatching Languages

Programming-language research has introduced a considerable number of advanced-dispatching mechanisms in order to improve modularity. Advanced-dispatching mechanisms allow changing the behavior of a function without modifying their call sites and thus make the local behavior of code less comprehensible. Debuggers are tools, thus needed, which can help a developer to comprehend program behavior but current debuggers do not provide inspection of advanced-\ud dispatching-related language constructs. In this paper, we present a debugger which extends a traditional Java debugger with the ability of debugging an advanced-dispatching language constructs and a user interface for inspecting this

An empirical study of aspect-oriented metrics

Metrics for aspect-oriented software have been proposed and used to investigate the benefits and the disadvantages of crosscutting concerns modularisation. Some of these metrics have not been rigorously defined nor analytically evaluated. Also, there are few empirical data showing typical values of these metrics in aspect-oriented software. In this paper, we provide rigorous definitions, usage guidelines, analytical evaluation, and empirical data from ten open source projects, determining the value of six metrics for aspect-oriented software (lines of code, weighted operations in module, depth of inheritance tree, number of children, crosscutting degree of an aspect, and coupling on advice execution). We discuss how each of these metrics can be used to identify shortcomings in existing aspect-oriented software. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.CNPq [140046/06-2]; Project CNPQ-PROSUL [490478/06-9]; Capes-Grices [2051-05-2]; FAPERGS [10/0470-1]; FCT MCTESinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio