Aspect-Oriented Modeling and Verification with Finite State Machines

Aspect-oriented programming modularizes crosscutting concerns into aspects with the advice invoked at the specified points of program execution. Aspects can be used in a harmful way that invalidates desired properties and even destroys the conceptual integrity of programs. To assure the quality of an aspect-oriented system, rigorous analysis and design of aspects are highly desirable. In this paper, we present an approach to aspect-oriented modeling and verification with finite state machines. Our approach provides explicit notations (e.g., pointcut, advice and aspect) for capturing crosscutting concerns and incremental modification requirements with respect to class state models. For verification purposes, we compose the aspect models and class models in an aspect-oriented model through a weaving mechanism. Then we transform the woven models and the class models not affected by the aspects into FSP (Finite State Processes), which are to be checked by the LTSA (Labeled Transition System Analyzer) model checker against the desired system properties. We have applied our approach to the modeling and verification of three aspect-oriented systems. To further evaluate the effectiveness of verification, we created a large number of flawed aspect models and verified them against the system requirements. The results show that the verification has revealed all flawed models. This indicates that our approach is effective in quality assurance of aspect-oriented state models. As such, our approach can be used for model-checking state-based specification of aspect-oriented design and can uncover some system design problems before the system is implemented.     

基于 UML扩展的面向方面建模 *

面向方面编程 ( AOP)把横切关注点从系统中分离 ,解决了面向对象编程 ( OOP)中代码纠缠、散射的问题。但在面向方面建模中 ,横切方面没有得到很好的支持。首先 ,在统一建模语言 ( UML)元模型的基础上利用类图建立了整体框架模型 ,设计了核心类、方面、横切元素及其之间的关系 ;其次 ,利用 UML扩展机制为切点、通知、方面等主要元素建立了新的模型 ,设计了它们与方面之间新的关联关系并为其定义了语义。通过 UML扩展,使得 UML能够直接表达面向方面概念 ,支持面向方面建模设计 ,实现了面向方面模型     

基于 UML扩展的面向方面建模 *

面向方面编程（AOP）把横切关注点从系统中分离,解决了面向对象编程（OOP）中代码纠缠、散射的问题。但在面向方面建模中,横切方面没有得到很好的支持。首先,在统一建模语言（UML）元模型的基础上利用类图建立了整体框架模型,设计了核心类、方面、横切元素及其之间的关系;其次,利用UML扩展机制为切点、通知、方面等主要元素建立了新的模型,设计了它们与方面之间新的关联关系并为其定义了语义。通过UML扩展,使得UML能够直接表达面向方面概念,支持面向方面建模设计,实现了面向方面模型的可视化和可辨别性;整体框架模型使得面向方面整体结构清晰,各个核心元素之间关系明确,为面向方面建模提供了一个整体设计平台,提高了面向方面软件设计的模块化,增强了代码的重用性和系统的可维护性。     

A transformation contract to generate aspects from access control policies

Access control is an important security issue. It has been addressed since the late 1960s in the early time-sharing computer systems. Many access control models have been proposed since than but of particular interest is Ferraiolo and Khun’s role-based access control model (RBAC). It is a simple and yet general model which has been deeply studied and applied both in industry and in academia. A variety of industrial standards have been proposed based on this model. Generating code for an access control policy is an interesting challenge. Understanding access control as a non-functional concern that cross-cuts the functional part of a system raises difficulties quite suitable for a solution based on aspect-oriented programming. In this paper, we address the problems of specification and validation of code generation for access control policies targeting an aspect-based infra-structure. We propose an MDA approach. The code generator is a transformation from SecureUML, an RBAC-based modeling language, to the language Aspects for Access Control (AAC), an aspect-oriented modeling language proposed in this paper. Metamodels are used to represent the languages and to specify the transformation. A metamodel is used to represent the abstract syntax of a language and the constraints that a given instance model of the metamodel must fulfill. We also use a metamodel to specify the code generator. This transformation metamodel, together with all the constraints, that is, from both languages and those constraints regarding the merge of the two languages, we call a transformation contract. It merges and conservatively extends the source and target metamodels of the model transformation it represents. In the context of code-generation for access control policies, the transformation contract specifies the relationships between the abstract syntaxes of SecureUML and AAC and constrains the two languages. The validation of the code generator also uses the transformation contract. For a given access control policy and aspect, represented as instances of the appropriate metamodels, with aspects produced by the code generator, the constraints of the transformation contract must hold. We have prototyped a transformer from SecureUML to aspects on top of ITP/OCL, an OCL interpreter that automatically validates the generated aspect code by applying the constraints of the transformation contract.     

基于MOF面向方面建模工具的研究与实现

建模在软件开发中起着非常重要的作用,其有效性和准确性关系到软件系统的开发效率及扩展.该文结合MOF及面向方面的理论,建立了两阶段面向方面建模的理论模型,提出了一种基于MOF面向方面建模工具(MAMT)的设计和实现方法;并针对MAMT中方面模型给出了转换定义;同时提出一种新的模型转换语言AOMTL,来处理含有方面概念的模...     

一种基于形式概念分析的语句级自动化方面挖掘方法

现有的方面挖掘技术一般是类的方法级的挖掘,侧重于软件系统的结构改造,不能直接解决面向方面编程所关注的语句级代码纠缠和代码分散问题．针对这种情况．表文提出了一种基于形式概念分析的语句级自动化方面挖掘方法．该方法使用形式慨愈分析识别源代码中的关注点,实现语句级的自动化方面挖掘．该方法具有自动化、语句级和效率高等特点,可以用来快速实现对遗留平统的面向方面的改造．     

Application-specific models and pointcuts using a logic metalanguage

In contemporary aspect-oriented languages, pointcuts are usually specified directly in terms of the structure of the source code. The definition of such low-level pointcuts requires aspect developers to have a profound understanding of the entire application's implementation and often leads to complex, fragile and hard-to-maintain pointcut definitions. To resolve these issues, we present an aspect-oriented programming system that features a logic-based pointcut language that is open such that it can be extended with application-specific pointcut predicates. These predicates define an application-specific model that serves as a contract that base program developers provide and aspect developers can depend upon. As a result, pointcuts can be specified in terms of this more high-level model of the application which confines all intricate implementation details that are otherwise exposed in the pointcut definitions themselves.     

方面单元测试框架的设计与实现

缺乏成熟的方面测试和方面冲突检测技术是阻碍面向方面软件编程大规模应用的瓶颈性问题。针对方面单元测试,提出了无需与基模块编织的方面单元的独立测试框架AJUnit。该框架运用Java注释和源码与字节码映射等技术实现编译细节的透明化。基于控制流和数据流分析,AJUnit综合运用随机测试数据生成、相对测试充分性准则的优化和指定路径的测试数据生成等技术实现测试过程的自动化。文中也介绍了以AJUnit为基础的方面单元测试工具的设计和实现。     

Applying and combining three different aspect Mining Techniques

Understanding a software system at source-code level requires understanding the different concerns that it addresses, which in turn requires a way to identify these concerns in the source code. Whereas some concerns are explicitly represented by program entities (like classes, methods and variables) and thus are easy to identify, crosscutting concerns are not captured by a single program entity but are scattered over many program entities and are tangled with the other concerns. Because of their crosscutting nature, such crosscutting concerns are difficult to identify, and reduce the understandability of the system as a whole. In this paper, we report on a combined experiment in which we try to identify crosscutting concerns in the JHotDraw framework automatically. We first apply three independently developed aspect mining techniques to JHotDraw and evaluate and compare their results. Based on this analysis, we present three interesting combinations of these three techniques, and show how these combinations provide a more complete coverage of the detected concerns as compared to the original techniques individually. Our results are a first step towards improving the understandability of a system that contains crosscutting concerns, and can be used as a basis for refactoring the identified crosscutting concerns into aspects. M. Ceccato is a PhD student in ITC-irst in Trento, Italy. He received his degree in Software Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy, in 2003. The master thesis concerned the Re-engineering of an existing big-sized data warehouse application. The project was developed in the Information Technology department in Alcoa Servizi. His research interests are on source code analysis and manipulation, especially for the the migration of object-oriented code to aspect-oriented programming. He collaborates with King’s College London and Loyola College in Maryland on the automatic support for this migration process. He has been involved in the organization and in the program committee of a number of AOP-related events, such as Late Workshop, in Chicago (2005) and in Bonn, Germany (2006), held within the major Aspect Oriented Programming conference (AOSD) and 3rd European Workshop on Aspects in Software (EWAS’06) in Enschede, The Netherlands. Marius Marin is a Ph.D. researcher in the Software Evolution Reseach Laboratory at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He was granted an engineering degree by the Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest, in 2000, and Licentiate in Economic Computer Science from the Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, in 2002. Before starting his Ph.D. studies, he worked as a software engineer in industry. His main research interests are in the area of reverse engineering, software modularization and modeling, and aspect-oriented software development. He is the main author of the publicly available aspect mining tool FINT and he publishes at international conferences in the aforementioned topics. He has been involved in program- and organizing committees of several workshops related to aspect mining. Kim Mens obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, on “architectural conformance checking,” for which he used a declarative meta-programming approach. After his Ph.D. he became a full-time professor (chargé de cours) at the Université catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL). In addition to his current interest in logic meta-programming and intensional views, Kim Mens is one of the originators of the reuse contracts technique for automatically detecting conflicts in evolving software. He has been formally involved in several research networks related to software evolution. He has a strong interest in object-oriented and aspect-oriented software development and has actively participated in the organization of several workshops and conferences on those topics. He combines all these different research interests under the common denominator of co-evolution (between source code and earlier life-cycle software artifacts). Other research topics that fit this common theme and in which he is interested are software architecture, software maintenance, reverse engineering, software transformation, software restructuring and renovation, aspect mining and evolution of aspect programs. L. Moonen is an assistant professor in the Software Evolution Research Lab at Delft University of Technology and a researcher at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), the Netherlands. His research interests are the design and development of advanced program analysis tools and techniques that support development, maintenance and evolution of large software systems. Concrete topics include the reverse engineering and exploration of views on software systems and their use for understanding and assessing software quality attributes such as evolvability, reliability and security. Dr. Moonen received an MSc (cum laude, Computer Science, 1996) and PhD (Computer Science, 2002) from the University of Amsterdam. He is one of the founders of the Software Improvement Group, a company that specializes in tools and consultancy to help organizations solve their legacy problems. He publishes regularly at, and serves on organizing-, steering- and program committees of, international workshops and conferences on reverse engineering (WCRE), source code analysis (SCAM), software maintenance (ICSM), program understanding (ICPC), reengineering (CSMR), aspect mining (Dagstuhl 06302, TEAM) and software security (CoBaSSA). Paolo Tonella is a senior researcher at ITC-irst, Trento, Italy. He received his laurea degree cum laude in Electronic Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy, in 1992, and his Ph.D. degree in Software Engineering from the same University, in 1999, with the thesis “Code Analysis in Support to Software Maintenance.” Since 1994 he has been a full time researcher of the Software Engineering group at ITC-irst. He participated in several industrial and European Community projects on software analysis and testing. He is the author of “Reverse Engineering of Object Oriented Code,” Springer, 2005. His current research interests include reverse engineering, aspect oriented programming, empirical studies, Web applications and testing. Tom Tourwé obtained the degree of Licentiate in Computer Science in 1997 and Ph.D. in Science in 2002 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is currently associated to the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where he works as a post- doctoral researcher in the Ideals project. His main research interests lie in the broad area of software engineering, and include aspect-oriented software evolution and re-engineering in particular. He published several peer-reviewed articles on these topics in international journals and conferences, and organised a number of workshops on those themes.     

AOP中方面冲突自动检测方法研究

为了解决面向方面编程中的方面冲突问题,在分析现有解决方法的基础上,提出了一种基于契约式设计的方面冲突自动检测方案。根据设计文档使用JML给方面和基础程序标注契约,利用契约转换程序生成契约检查程序,契约检查程序与面向方面的应用程序一起编译,生成包含契约检查的目标文件,从而在程序执行时,自动检测出方面与基础程序间的冲突以及方面与方面间冲突。该方案不破坏现有的应用程序,且无需重新设计编译器。通过一个实例表明该方案的可行性。     

一种基于面向方面机制的模型转换方法

传统对象建模技术生成的PIM(Model Driven Architecture)一般是多重关注点混杂在一起的大型模型,该模型会导致PIM到PSM(Platform Specific Model)的模型转换工作较为困难.提出了一种基于面向方面机制的模型转换方法,该方法在模型层将系统横切关注点与核心关注点分离,单独建模为方面子模型,给出了方面PIM到方面PSM的转换规则,改进了对象建模生成的模型在转换中关注点混杂和对横切关注点管理的不足.     

Program Understanding as Constraint Satisfaction: Representation and Reasoning Techniques

The process of understanding a source code in a high-level programming language involves complex computation. Given a piece of legacy code and a library of program plan templates, understanding the code corresponds to building mappings from parts of the source code to particular program plans. These mappings could be used to assist an expert in reverse engineering legacy code, to facilitate software reuse, or to assist in the translation of the source into another programming language. In this paper we present a model of program understanding using constraint satisfaction. Within this model we intelligently compose a partial global picture of the source program code by transforming knowledge about the problem domain and the program itself into sets of constraints. We then systematically study different search algorithms and empirically evaluate their performance. One advantage of the constraint satisfaction model is its generality; many previous attempts in program understanding could now be cast under the same spectrum of heuristics, and thus be readily compared. Another advantage is the improvement in search efficiency using various heuristic techniques in constraint satisfaction.     

面向方面的时间特性建模

基于面向方面软件设计方法,分离出分布式式系统的时间特性作为一个方面单独建模,将时间子方面思想应用到统一建模语言(UML)建模中,利用随机实时时序逻辑和模糊时间Petri网扩展UML约束。实例证明,该建模方法可解决UML语义问题,使建模更准确,且为日后代码织入、自动生成和测试提供方便。     

Weaving temporal and reliability aspects into a schema tapestry

In aspect-oriented programming (AOP) a cross-cutting concern is implemented in an aspect. An aspect weaver blends code from the aspect into a program’s code at programmer-specified cut points, yielding an aspect-enhanced program. In this paper, we apply some of the concepts from the AOP paradigm to data. Like code, data also has cross-cutting concerns such as versioning, security, privacy, and reliability. We propose modeling a cross-cutting data concern as a schema aspect. A schema aspect describes the structure of the metadata in the cross-cutting concern, identifies the types of data elements that can be wrapped with metadata, i.e., the cut points, and provides some simple constraints on the use of the metadata. Several schema aspects can be applied to a single data collection, though in this paper we focus on just two aspects: a reliability aspect and a temporal aspect. We show how to weave the schema for these two aspects together with the schema for the data into a single, unified schema that we call a schema tapestry. The tapestry guides the construction, interpretation, and validation of an aspect-enhanced data collection.     

一种面向方面的模型转换语言AOMTL*

针对面向方面的PIM到面向方面的PSM的转换,提出了一种面向方面的模型转换语言AOMTL。首先建立方面模型的转换框架;然后根据此框架建立AOMTL的元模型,设计AOMTL的具体语法;最后使用AOMTL完成方面模型转换。该方法为形式化及自动化方面模型转换的描述与实现提供了一种有效的解决办法。     

Weaving temporal and reliability aspects into a schema tapestry

In aspect-oriented programming (AOP) a cross-cutting concern is implemented in an aspect. An aspect weaver blends code from the aspect into a program’s code at programmer-specified cut points, yielding an aspect-enhanced program. In this paper, we apply some of the concepts from the AOP paradigm to data. Like code, data also has cross-cutting concerns such as versioning, security, privacy, and reliability. We propose modeling a cross-cutting data concern as a schema aspect. A schema aspect describes the structure of the metadata in the cross-cutting concern, identifies the types of data elements that can be wrapped with metadata, i.e., the cut points, and provides some simple constraints on the use of the metadata. Several schema aspects can be applied to a single data collection, though in this paper we focus on just two aspects: a reliability aspect and a temporal aspect. We show how to weave the schema for these two aspects together with the schema for the data into a single, unified schema that we call a schema tapestry. The tapestry guides the construction, interpretation, and validation of an aspect-enhanced data collection.     

Aspect-oriented model-driven code generation: A systematic mapping study

ContextModel-driven code generation is being increasingly applied to enhance software development from perspectives of maintainability, extensibility and reusability. However, aspect-oriented code generation from models is an area that is currently underdeveloped.ObjectiveIn this study we provide a survey of existing research on aspect-oriented modeling and code generation to discover current work and identify needs for future research.MethodA systematic mapping study was performed to find relevant studies. Classification schemes have been defined and the 65 selected primary studies have been classified on the basis of research focus, contribution type and research type.ResultsThe papers of solution proposal research type are in a majority. All together aspect-oriented modeling appears being the most focused area divided into modeling notations and process (36%) and model composition and interaction management (26%). The majority of contributions are methods.ConclusionAspect-oriented modeling and composition mechanisms have been significantly discussed in existing literature while more research is needed in the area of model-driven code generation. Furthermore, we have observed that previous research has frequently focused on proposing solutions and thus there is need for research that validates and evaluates the existing proposals in order to provide firm foundations for aspect-oriented model-driven code generation.     

基于AOP的MDA模型转换

模型驱动架构的软件开发方法能够直接生成可用的软件产品,但在开发过程中的建模与模型转换难以实现核心关注点与横切关注点的分离,从而导致模型的纠结和重复。基于模型层的面向方面思想(AOP)可以先将核心功能与横切功能分开独立建模,然后再通过编织技术将它们集成起来,从而有效地解决了这个问题。探讨了通过扩展UML语言使之能表现方面的特性的方法,以及如何针对MDA的不同层次来使用相对应的方面来表达。为模型转换的具体实现提供了可行的方法。