Title
Towards a unified coupling framework for measuring aspect-oriented programs
Abstract
There is nowadays a wide recognition that low coupling is a main tenet in the measurement of high-quality modular software. In fact, coupling is one of the few internal software attributes that has been both theoretically and empirically shown to have a large impact on a variety of external software qualities, such as reusability, maintainability, evolvability and testability. Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is an emerging technique that advocates enhanced modularization of certain widely-scoped system properties, the so-called crosscutting concerns. However, there is a poor common understanding of coupling in the context of AOP. Most of the existing metrics and assessment frameworks concentrate on the coupling evaluation of the AspectJ programming language. In addition, they took their own particular view of what coupling means in this particular language. This paper presents the definition of a generic coupling framework that takes into account both AspectJ and CaesarJ, two representatives of the most well-known families of available AOP languages. The current version of the proposed framework allows for the definition of different coupling metrics, which in turn permits the analysis and comparison of Java, AspectJ and CaesarJ implementations. We also illustrate how the framework can be applied to the characterization of existing coupling metrics.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1145/1188895.1188907
SOQUA
Keywords
DocType
ISBN
aspect-oriented program,coupling metrics,aspectj programming language,low coupling,assessment framework,coupling evaluation,existing metrics,different coupling metrics,external software quality,available aop language,generic coupling framework,unified coupling framework,coupling,software quality,aspect oriented programming,metrics,programming language
Conference
1-59593-584-3
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
13
0.74
11
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Thiago T. Bartolomei1602.28
Alessandro Garcia22231143.70
Claudio Sant'Anna342117.56
Eduardo Figueiredo485136.26