On the modularization and reuse of exception handling with aspects

  • Authors:

  • Fernando Castor;Nélio Cacho;Eduardo Figueiredo;Alessandro Garcia;Cecília M. F. Rubira;Jefferson Silva de Amorim;Hítalo Oliveira da Silva

  • Affiliations:

  • Informatics Center, Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Recife, Brazil;School of Science and Technology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Natal, Brazil;Computing Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, U.K.;Informatics Department, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;Institute of Computing, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil;Department of Computing and Systems, University of Pernambuco (UPE), Recife, Brazil;Department of Computing and Systems, University of Pernambuco (UPE), Recife, Brazil

  • Venue:
  • Software—Practice & Experience
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

This paper presents an in-depth study of the adequacy of the AspectJ language for modularizing and reusing exception-handling code. The study consisted of refactoring existing applications so that the code responsible for implementing error-handling strategies was moved to newly created exception handler aspects. We have performed quantitative assessments of five systems—four object-oriented and one aspect-oriented—based on four key quality attributes, namely separation of concerns, coupling, cohesion, and conciseness. Our investigation also included a multi-perspective analysis of the refactored systems, including (i) the extent to which error-handling aspects can be reused, (ii) the beneficial and harmful aspectization scenarios for exception handling, and (iii) the scalability of AOP to support the modularization of exception handling in the presence of other aspects. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.