Improving maintenance in AOP through an interaction specification framework

The invasiveness of aspects is beneficial to modularize crosscutting concerns that require the modification of the data or control flow. However, it introduces subtle errors that are hard to locate and fix in case of evolution. In this paper we illustrate this issue by evolving a program implemented using aspects. Interaction issues, between aspects and the program, emerge from this evolution. We locate them through manual inspection and test execution. This tedious process motivates the need for an abstract specification of intended interactions. To tackle this issue, we propose a framework for specifying the types of invasiveness pattern that are allowed of forbidden in the program. We have also implemented a tool that automatically checks whether the specification is satisfied by the aspects.