Migrating Object Oriented code to Aspect Oriented Programming

Abstract

Aspect oriented programming (AOP) is a new programming paradigm that offers a novel modularization unit for the crosscutting concerns. Functionalities originally spread across several modules and tangled with each other can be factored out into a single, separate unit, called an aspect. We investigated automated techniques that can be used to support the migration of existing Object Oriented Programming (OOP) code to AOP. To migrate an application to the new paradigm, a preliminary identification of the cross-cutting concerns is required (aspect mining). Then refactoring is applied to transform the scattered concerns into aspects. The proposed methods have been assessed on case studies for a total of more than half a million lines of code.