Experiences documenting and preserving software constraints using aspects

Software systems are increasingly being built as compositions of reusable artifacts (components, frameworks, toolkits, plug-ins, APIs, etc) that have non-trivial usage constraints in the form of interface contracts, underlying assumptions and design composition rules. Satisfying these constraints is challenging: they are often not well documented; or they are difficult to integrate into the software development process in ways that allow their identification by developers; or they may not be enforced by existing tools and development environments. Aspect-Oriented Programming has been advocated as an approach to represent and enforce software constraints in code artifacts. Aspects can be used to detect constraint violations, or more pro-actively, to ensure that the constraints are satisfied without requiring the developer’s attention. This paper discusses our experience using aspects to document and enforce software constraints in an industrial application, specifically TDE/UML, a mo...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: AOSD
• Authors: Roberto Silveira Silva Filho, François Bronsard, William M. Hasling
• Keywords: AOSD 2011, Software, Software Constraints, Software Development, Software Engineering