On the Necessity of Empirical Studies in the Assessment of Modularization Mechanisms for Crosscutting Concerns

Abstract

Collaborations are a frequently occurring class of crosscutting concerns. Prior work has argued that collaborations are better implemented using Collaboration Languages (CLs) rather than AspectJ-like Languages (ALs). The main argument is that aspects flatten the objectoriented structure of a collaboration, and introduce more complexity rather than benefits -in other words, CLs and ALs differ with regard to program comprehension. To explore the effects of CL and AL modularization mechanisms on program comprehension, we propose to conduct a series of experiments. We present ideas on how to arrange such experiments that should serve as a starting point and foster a discussion with other researchers.

Pointcuts, advice, refinements, and collaborations: similarities, differences, and synergies

“…The straightforward mapping between classes and refinements in the CL solution facilitates a better program comprehension [32]. Even though arguments regarding comprehension are difficult to prove [6], recent work supports this hypothesis [2,3,16,26,32].…”

Expressive scoping of dynamically-deployed aspects

“…Also, our treatment of deployment strategies focus on behavioral adaptation with the pointcut-advice mechanism. Many interesting aspects actually rely on both behavioral and structural adaptation [1], e.g. using intertype declarations.…”

Extending omniscient debugging to support aspect-oriented programming

“…This is due to the semantics of the step-into operation of Java: the execution halts when it reaches another source code line, but the instanceof operation implementing the type test is considered to be on the same line than the rest of the AOP activities. 1 Step-over, on the other hand, provides full obliviousness: all AOP activities on the current line are ignored, including advice execution. But there is no way to step into a method call on the current line while ignoring AOP activities.…”