Evaluation of reusability in Aspect Oriented Software using inheritance metrics

Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) is a promising methodology for efficiently capturing the cross-cutting functionalities (concerns) as independent units called aspects. Inheritance of classes and aspects play a vital role in defining the units of encapsulation. Hence, it is essential to quantitatively capture the impact of inheritance in AOSD using design level metrics and to infer on the higher level quality attribute, reusability. An application to automate the processes of a typical University has been developed in order to study the effect of using inheritance over the versions of an aspectized AO application. A set of metrics to capture the manifestations of inheritance is proposed for measurement. An automated tool named as Aspect Oriented Software Reusability Measurement AOSRM is also designed and developed to calculate the values of the proposed metrics. Based on the obtained metric values for Java and AspectJ versions of the case study application, inheritance in AspectJ versions showed a positive impact on reusability of software.