A graphical tool for observing state and behavioral changes at join points

Abstract

To comprehend programs or to fix a bug, programmers always mentally simulate the program execution by reading the source code. Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) increases this mental effort, because it can alter the state and the behavior of the base program at a join point to any extent by executing advices. Advices are implicitly invoked in the source code and their compositions at a join point may vary according to the runtime context. They can access and even change the context values of join points. Without appropriate tools, it is difficult to notice the effects of the implicitly executed advices. The goal of my work is to increase the comprehensibility of AO programs by using a graphical tool, that can succinctly visualize the state and behavioral changes at join points.