A closer look at aspect interference and cooperation

Abstract

In this work we consider specification and compositional verification for interference detection when several aspects are woven together under joint-weaving semantics without recursion. In this semantics, whenever a joinpoint of an aspect is reached, the corresponding advice is begun even if the joinpoint is inside the advice of other aspects. This captures most of the possible aspect interference cases in AspectJ. Moreover, the given technique is used to capture cooperation among aspects, which enhances modularity. The extended specification and proof obligations should provide insight to the possible interactions among aspects in a reusable library.

Specification and verification of event detectors and responses

“…One aspect may affect the behavior of another aspect, for instance when both change the same variables. In previous work on interference detection [10,12], it has been shown that if in addition to aspect verification we can check that:…”

“…The specification of each aspect consists of an assumption and a guarantee, so that each aspect can be verified modularly. In particular, for the verification of an aspect A, it has been shown [10,12] that the specification needs to include what is assumed about the underlying system (A's external assumption), what is assumed about any aspect that may execute during A (A's internal assumption) and the guarantee about the augmented system (base system with A woven).…”

“…Such specification provides a better understanding of the system, and moreover, allows applying formal verification techniques based on model checking to guarantee the correctness of each modularly or detect interference among aspects [10,12].…”

Identification and Removal of Interfernce in Aspectj Programs

“…Finally, a report is generated with the list of identified interferences that are present in the given AspectJ code and possible removal methods for the interferences. [4]. These source code analyzer tools takes code written in different programming languages but there is no extension available for identifying interferences in AspectJ software.…”

Compositional verification of events and aspects

“…The problem of interference and cooperation among aspects under joint-weaving semantics has been considered in [3] (also part of this research), introducing the specification and verification techniques in order to detect interference or verify the correctness of a set of (possibly collaborative) aspects. The specification now refines the assume-guarantee model, using LTL formulas to express what is expected of the system to be adviced by an aspect A, and what is expected of any aspect to be executed during A.…”