Evaluating the Use of AOP and MDA in Web Service Development

Model-driven architecture (MDA) is introduced to shorten the software development time, produce better quality of code and promote the reuse of software artifacts. On the other hand, aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is motivated by the need to create decoupled systems, which are easier to maintain. As a result, it can be argued that adopting AOP and MDA side-by-side will provide advantages from both sets of techniques. However, adapting a new technology often entails extra cost and effort, including cost associated with training and support for the software tool. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate the usefulness of applying such techniques. This paper presents a quantitative approach to evaluate the use of MDA and AOP in service-oriented environments. We shall start by presenting an outline of a method of implementation and maintenance of Web services, based on both MDA and AOP. Then, with the help of a case study we shall evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of applying the method, achieved by comparing two implementations of a prototype University Administration system; the first implementation is based on ad-hoc methods of Web service development, whereas the second implementation is carried out by applying MDA and AOP. We shall use various metrics to report on the maintainability, performance, percentage of generated and reused code resulting from the use of MDA and AOP.