Undesirable Aspect Interactions: A Prevention Policy for Three Aspect Fault Types

Aspect-oriented software development (AOSD) has emerged in recent years as a new paradigm for software development, providing mechanisms to localize cross-cutting concerns (i.e. scattered in many locations) during the software development process. Aspect interaction problems (due to their integration into the base components) are an important issue in AOSD, verification is most often based on a detection and correction strategy. This paper presents a prevention policy at the specification phase for some kinds of undesirable aspect interactions, which are caused by the following three aspect fault types: "Incorrect strength in point cut patterns", "Failure to establish expected post-conditions" and "Failure to preserve state invariants". By acting at the specification phase, we believe that formal verification will be made greatly faster and cheaper.