A Graph-Based Aspect Interference Detection Approach for UML-Based Aspect-Oriented Models

Abstract

Abstract. Aspect Oriented Modeling (AOM) techniques facilitate separate modeling of concerns and allow for a more flexible composition of these than traditional modeling technique. While this improves the understandability of each submodel, in order to reason about the behavior of the composed system and to detect conflicts among submodels, automated tool support is required. Current techniques for conflict detection among aspects generally have at least one of the following weaknesses. They require to manually model the abstract semantics for each system; or they derive the system semantics from code assuming one specific aspect-oriented language. Defining an extra semantics model for verification bears the risk of inconsistencies between the actual and the verified design; verifying only at implementation level hinders fixing errors in earlier phases. We propose a technique for fully automatic detection of conflicts between aspects at the model level; more specifically, our approach works on UML models with an extension for modeling pointcuts and advice. As back-end we use a graph-based model checker, for which we have defined an operational semantics of UML diagrams, pointcuts and advice. In order to simulate the system, we automatically derive a graph model from the diagrams. The result is another graph, which represents all possible program executions, and which can be verified against a declarative specification of invariants. To demonstrate our approach, we discuss a UML-based AOM model of the "Crisis Management System" and a possible design and evolution scenario. The complexity of the system makes conflicts among composed aspects hard to detect: already in the case of two simulated aspects, the state space contains 623 different states and 9 different execution paths. Nevertheless, in case the right pruning methods are used, the state-space only grows linearly with the number of aspects; therefore, the automatic analysis scales.

Expressing aspectual interactions in design: evaluating three AOM approaches in the slot machine domain

“…For such detection, typically the UML models are transformed into graphs which are then analyzed to look for interactions. This approach is also advocated by Ciraci et al [9] and Mehner et al [25].…”

Empowering Non-conservative Parallelizing Refactoring by Non-monotonic Reasoning

“…While reasoning about conflicts at weaving is important [7], [15] we believe conflicts can be avoided with help from domain-specific conflict-free typed default transformation sequences. While loop parallelization through weaving has been discussed in [9] it has been more about individual join point patterns and not refactoring adaptation through reasoning.…”

A Symmetric Compositional Approach for Adaptive Ubiquitous Systems

“…Graph are not only intuitive representation of software architecture but are also used to identify errors on the analysis level. The integration of the paradigm of graph with the aspectoriented paradigm has been proposed by Cirarci et al [17]. They use graph formalism to identify interference.…”