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On the modularization and reuse of exception handling with aspects
Author(s) -
Castor Fernando,
Cacho Nélio,
Figueiredo Eduardo,
Garcia Alessandro,
Rubira Cecília M. F.,
de Amorim Jefferson Silva,
da Silva Hítalo Oliveira
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.939
Subject(s) - code refactoring , exception handling , computer science , reuse , aspectj , cohesion (chemistry) , modular programming , software engineering , smalltalk , programming language , object oriented programming , aspect oriented programming , separation of concerns , reusability , scalability , database , engineering , software , chemistry , organic chemistry , waste management
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.