Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International Workshop on Formal Approaches to Software Testing

International Conference on Runtime Verification

FATES 2006, RV 2006: Formal Approaches to Software Testing and Runtime Verification pp 20–39Cite as

Aspects for Trace Monitoring

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4262))

Abstract

A trace monitor observes the sequence of events in a system, and takes appropriate action when a given pattern occurs in that sequence. Aspect-oriented programming provides a convenient framework for writing such trace monitors.

We provide a brief introduction to aspect-oriented programming in AspectJ. AspectJ only provides support for triggering extra code with single events, and we present a new language feature (named tracematches) that allows one to directly express patterns that range over the whole current trace. Implementing this feature efficiently is challenging, and we report on our work towards that goal.

Another drawback of AspectJ is the highly syntactic nature of the event patterns, often requiring the programmer to list all methods that have a certain property, rather than specifying that property itself. We argue that Datalog provides an appropriate notation for describing such properties. Furthermore, all of the existing patterns in AspectJ can be reduced to Datalog via simple rewrite rules.

This research is carried out with abc, an extensible optimising compiler for AspectJ, which is freely available for download.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. abc. The AspectBench Compiler. Home page with downloads, FAQ, documentation, support mailing lists, and bug database, http://aspectbench.org

  2. abc team. Trace monitoring benchmarks (2006), http://abc.comlab.ox.ac.uk/packages/tmbenches.tar.gz

  3. Adams, B.: Aspicere (2004), http://users.ugent.be/~badams/aspicere/

  4. Aldrich, J.: Open Modules: modular reasoning about advice. In: Black, A.P. (ed.) ECOOP 2005. LNCS, vol. 3586, pp. 144–168. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Allan, C., Avgustinov, P., Christensen, A.S., Hendren, L., Kuzins, S., Lhoták, O., de Moor, O., Sereni, D., Sittampalam, G., Tibble, J.: Adding Trace Matching with Free Variables to AspectJ. In: Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 345–364. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  6. AOSD.NET. Tools for developers (2006), http://www.aosd.net/wiki/index.php?title=Tools_for_Developers

  7. Aracic, I., Gasiunas, V., Mezini, M., Ostermann, K.: An overview of AspectJ. In: Rashid, A., Aksit, M. (eds.) Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development I. LNCS, vol. 3880, pp. 135–173. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Avgustinov, P., Christensen, A.S., Hendren, L., Kuzins, S., Lhoták, J., Lhoták, O., de Moor, O., Sereni, D., Sittampalam, G., Tibble, J.: abc: An extensible AspectJ compiler. In: Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD), pp. 87–98. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Avgustinov, P., Christensen, A.S., Hendren, L., Kuzins, S., Lhoták, J., Lhoták, O., de Moor, O., Sereni, D., Sittampalam, G., Tibble, J.: Optimising aspectj. In: PLDI 2005: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGPLAN conference on Programming language design and implementation, pp. 117–128. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Avgustinov, P., Christensen, A.S., Hendren, L., Kuzins, S., Lhoták, J., Lhoták, O., de Moor, O., Sereni, D., Sittampalam, G., Tibble, J.: abc: An extensible AspectJ compiler. In: Rashid, A., Aksit, M. (eds.) Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development I. LNCS, vol. 3880, pp. 293–334. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Avgustinov, P., Tibble, J., Bodden, E., Hendren, L., Lhoták, O., de Moor, O., Ongkingco, N., Sittampalam, G.: Efficient Trace Monitoring. Technical Report abc-2006-1, AspectBench Compiler Project (2006), http://abc.comlab.ox.ac.uk/techreports#abc-2006-1

  12. Barringer, H., Goldberg, A., Havelund, K., Sen, K.: Rule-based runtime verification. In: Steffen, B., Levi, G. (eds.) VMCAI 2004. LNCS, vol. 2937, pp. 44–57. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Barzilay, O., Feldman, Y.A., Tyszberowicz, S., Yehudai, A.: Call and execution semantics in AspectJ. In: Foundations Of Aspect Languages (FOAL), pp. 19–24, Technical report TR #04-04, Department of Computer Science, Iowa State University (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Bobrow, D.G., Kahn, K., Kiczales, G., Masinter, L., Stefik, M., Zdybel, F.: Commonloops: merging common lisp and object-oriented programming. In: Meyrowitz, N.K. (ed.) ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA), vol. 791, pp. 152–184. ACM Press, New York (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Bockisch, C.: Alpha (2005), http://www.st.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/static/pages/projects/alpha/in%dex.html

  16. Bockisch, C., Mezini, M., Ostermann, K.: Quantifying over dynamic properties of program execution. In: 2nd Dynamic Aspects Workshop DAW 2005, Technical Report 05.01. Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science, pp. 71–75 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Bodden, E.: J-LO - A tool for runtime-checking temporal assertions. Master’s thesis, RWTH Aachen University (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Bodkin, R.: Pointcuts need a long form (2006), http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/aspectj-users/msg05971.html

  19. Böhm, O.: Aspectorientierte Programmierung mit AspectJ 5. Dpunkt.verlag (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Brichau, J., Mens, K., de Volder, K.: SOUL/aop (2002), http://prog.vub.ac.be/research/aop/soulaop.html

  21. Bruns, G., Jagadeesan, R., Jeffrey, A., Riely, J.: μABC: a minimal aspect calculus. In: Gardner, P., Yoshida, N. (eds.) CONCUR 2004. LNCS, vol. 3170, pp. 209–224. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. Burke, B.: Has and hasfield pointcut expressions (2004), http://aosd.net/pipermail/discuss_aosd.net/2004-May/000958.html

  23. Burstall, R.M., Popplestone, R.J.: POP-2 reference manual. In: Meltzer, B., Michie, D. (eds.) Machine Intellingence, vol. 5, pp. 207–246. Edinburgh University Press (1968)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Chen, Y., Nishimoto, M., Ramamoorthy, C.V.: The C information abstraction system. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 16(3), 325–334 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Cibrán, M.A., Verheecke, B.: Dynamic business rules for web service composition. In: 2nd Dynamic Aspects Workshop (DAW 2005), pp. 13–18 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Clifton, C., Leavens, G.T., Chambers, C., Millstein, T.: Multijava: modular open classes and symmetric multiple dispatch for java. In: OOPSLA 2000: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, pp. 130–145. ACM Press, New York (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  27. Colyer, A., Clement, A., Harley, G., Webster, M.: Eclipse AspectJ: Aspect-Oriented Programming with AspectJ and the Eclipse AspectJ development tools. Addison-Wesley, Reading (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  28. d’Amorim, M., Havelund, K.: Event-based runtime verification of java programs. In: WODA 2005: Proceedings of the third international workshop on Dynamic analysis, pp. 1–7. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  29. Dawson, S., Ramakrishnan, C.R., Warren, D.S.: Practical program analysis using general purpose logic programming systems. In: ACM Symposium on Programming Language Design and Implementation, pp. 117–126. ACM Press, New York (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  30. de Volder, K.: Aspect-oriented logic meta-programming. In: Cointe, P. (ed.) Reflection 1999. LNCS, vol. 1616, pp. 250–272. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  31. Douence, R., Fradet, P., Südholt, M.: A framework for the detection and resolution of aspect interactions. In: GPCE 2002. LNCS, vol. 2487, pp. 173–188 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Douence, R., Fradet, P., Südholt, M.: Composition, reuse and interaction analysis of stateful aspects. In: Lieberherr, K. (ed.) 3rd International Conference on Aspect-oriented Software Development, pp. 141–150 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Douence, R., Fradet, P., Südholt, M.: Trace-based aspects. In: Aspect-oriented Software Development, pp. 141–150. Addison-Wesley, Reading (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Douence, R., Fritz, T., Loriant, N., Menaud, J.-M., Ségura, M., Südholt, M.: An expressive aspect language for system applications with arachne. In: Aspect-Oriented Software Development, pp. 27–38 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Douence, R., Motelet, O., Südholt, M.: A formal definition of crosscuts. In: Yonezawa, A., Matsuoka, S. (eds.) Reflection 2001. LNCS, vol. 2192, pp. 170–186. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  36. Dufour, B., Goard, C., Hendren, L., de Moor, O., Sittampalam, G., Verbrugge, C.: Measuring the dynamic behaviour of aspectj programs. In: OOPSLA 2004: Proceedings of the 19th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, pp. 150–169. ACM Press, New York (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  37. Ernst, E., Ostermann, K., Cook, W.R.: A virtual class calculus. In: POPL 2006: Conference record of the 33rd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages, pp. 270–282. ACM Press, New York (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  38. Fritz, T., Ségura, M., Südholt, M., Wuchner, E., Menaud, J.M.: An application of dynamic AOP to medical image generation. In: 2nd Dynamic Aspects Workshop (DAW 2005), Technical Report 05.01. Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science, pp. 5–12 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  39. Gallaire, H., Minker, J.: Logic and Databases. Plenum Press, New York (1978)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Goldsmith, S., O’Callahan, R., Aiken, A.: Relational queries over program traces. In: Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 385–402 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Gradecki, J.D., Lesiecki, N.: Mastering AspectJ: Aspect-Oriented Programming in Java. Wiley, Chichester (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Trese group. Compose* (2005), http://janus.cs.utwente.nl:8000/twiki/bin/view/Composer/

  43. Kniesel, S.H.G., Rho, T.: Evolvable pattern implementations need generic aspects. In: ECOOP 2004, pp. 116–126 (June 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  44. Gybels, K.: Carma (2004), http://prog.vub.ac.be/~kgybels/Research/AOP.html

  45. Gybels, K., Brichau, J.: Arranging language features for more robust pattern-based crosscuts. In: 2nd International Conference on Aspect-oriented Software Development, pp. 60–69. ACM Press, New York (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  46. Hajiyev, E., Verbaere, M., de Moor, O.: Codequest: scalable source code queries with Datalog. In: Thomas, D. (ed.) ECOOP 2006. LNCS, vol. 4067, pp. 2–27. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  47. Hanenberg, S., Unland, R.: Sally (2003), http://dawis.icb.uni-due.de/?id=200

  48. Harrison, W., Ossher, H.: Subject-oriented programming (a critique of pure objects). In: Paepcke, A. (ed.) ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA), pp. 411–428. ACM Press, New York (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  49. Hugunin, J.: Support for modifiers in typepatterns (2003), http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/aspectj-users/msg01578.html

  50. Hui, P., Riely, J.: Temporal aspects as security automata. In: Foundations of Aspect-Oriented Languages (FOAL 2006), Workshop at AOSD 2006, Technical Report #06-01, pp. 19–28. Iowa State University (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  51. Janzen, D., de Volder, K.: Navigating and querying code without getting lost. In: 2nd International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development, pp. 178–187 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  52. Jarzabek, S.: Design of flexible static program analyzers with PQL. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 24(3), 197–215 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Javey, S., Mitsui, K., Nakamura, H., Ohira, T., Yasuda, K., Kuse, K., Kamimura, T., Helm, R.: Architecture of the XL C++ browser. In: CASCON 1992: Proceedings of the 1992 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative research, pp. 369–379. IBM Press (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  54. Kiczales, G., des Rivieres, J.: The Art of the Metaobject Protocol. MIT Press, Cambridge (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  55. Kiczales, G., Lamping, J., Menhdekar, A., Maeda, C., Lopes, C., Loingtier, J.-M., Irwin, J.: Aspect-oriented programming. In: Aksit, M., Matsuoka, S. (eds.) ECOOP 1997. LNCS, vol. 1241, pp. 220–242. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  56. Kiselev, I.: Aspect-oriented programming with AspectJ. SAMS (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  57. Laddad, R.: AspectJ in Action. Manning (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  58. Lam, M.S., Whaley, J., Livshits, V.B., Martin, M.C., Avots, D., Carbin, M., Unkel, C.: Context-sensitive program analysis as database queries. In: PODS 2005: Proceedings of the twenty-fourth ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART symposium on Principles of database systems, pp. 1–12. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  59. Lämmel, R., De Schutter, K.: What does aspect-oriented programming mean to Cobol? In: AOSD 2005: Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Aspect-oriented software development, pp. 99–110. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  60. Linton, M.A.: Implementing relational views of programs. In: Henderson, P.B. (ed.) Software Development Environments (SDE), pp. 132–140 (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  61. Martin, M., Livshits, B., Lam, M.S.: Finding application errors using PQL: a program query language. In: Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 365–383 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  62. McCormick, E., De Volder, K.: JQuery: finding your way through tangled code. In: OOPSLA 2004: Companion to the 19th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications, pp. 9–10. ACM Press, New York (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  63. Miles, R.: AspectJ cookbook. O’Reilly, Sebastopol (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  64. Nystrom, N., Chong, S., Myers, A.C.: Scalable extensibility via nested inheritance. In: OOPSLA 2004: Proceedings of the 19th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, pp. 99–115. ACM Press, New York (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  65. Odersky, M., Zenger, M.: Scalable component abstractions. In: OOPSLA 2005: Proceedings of the 20th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, pp. 41–57. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  66. Ongkingco, N., Avgustinov, P., Tibble, J., Hendren, L., de Moor, O., Sittampalam, G.: Adding open modules to AspectJ. In: AOSD 2006: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Aspect-oriented software development, pp. 39–50. ACM Press, New York (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  67. Paul, S., Prakash, A.: Querying source code using an algebraic query language. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 22(3), 202–217 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Reps, T.W.: Demand interprocedural program analysis using logic databases. In: Workshop on Programming with Logic Databases, ILPS, pp. 163–196 (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  69. Rho, T., Kniesel, G., Appeltauer, M., Linder, A.: LogicAJ (2006), http://roots.iai.uni-bonn.de/research/logicaj/people

  70. Sereni, D., de Moor, O.: Static analysis of aspects. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD), pp. 30–39 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  71. Stolz, V., Bodden, E.: Temporal Assertions using AspectJ. In: RV 2005 - Fifth Workshop on Runtime Verification. Electronical Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 144(4), pp. 109–124. Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  72. Vanderperren, W., Suvée, D., Cibrán, M.A., De Fraine, B.: Stateful Aspects in JAsCo. In: Gschwind, T., Aßmann, U., Nierstrasz, O. (eds.) SC 2005. LNCS, vol. 3628, pp. 167–181. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  73. Visser, E.: Meta-programming with Concrete Object Syntax. In: Batory, D., Consel, C., Taha, W. (eds.) GPCE 2002. LNCS, vol. 2487, pp. 299–315. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  74. Walker, D., Zdancewic, S., Ligatti, J.: A theory of aspects. In: ICFP 2003: Proceedings of the eighth ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming, pp. 127–139. ACM Press, New York (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  75. Walker, R., Viggers, K.: Implementing protocols via declarative event patterns. In: ACM Sigsoft International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-12), pp. 159–169 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  76. Wand, M., Kiczales, G., Dutchyn, C.: A semantics for advice and dynamic join points in aspect-oriented programming. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 26(5), 890–910 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  77. Whaley, J., Avots, D., Carbin, M., Lam, M.S.: Using Datalog with Binary Decision Diagrams for Program Analysis. In: Yi, K. (ed.) APLAS 2005. LNCS, vol. 3780, pp. 97–118. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programming Tools Group, Oxford University, United Kingdom

    Pavel Avgustinov, Elnar Hajiyev, Oege de Moor, Neil Ongkingco, Damien Sereni, Ganesh Sittampalam, Julian Tibble & Mathieu Verbaere

  2. Sable Research Group, McGill University, Montréal, Canada

    Eric Bodden & Laurie Hendren

  3. Programming Languages Group, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

    Ondřej Lhoták

Authors
  1. Pavel Avgustinov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Eric Bodden
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Elnar Hajiyev
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Laurie Hendren
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Ondřej Lhoták
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Oege de Moor
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Neil Ongkingco
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Damien Sereni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Ganesh Sittampalam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Julian Tibble
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Mathieu Verbaere
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Kestrel Technology, Palo Alto, California, USA

    Klaus Havelund

  2. Dept. Sistemas Informáticos y Programación Facultad de Informática, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Manuel Núñez

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

    Grigore Roşu

  4. Computer Science Dept., Saarland University, 66123, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Burkhart Wolff

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Avgustinov, P. et al. (2006). Aspects for Trace Monitoring. In: Havelund, K., Núñez, M., Roşu, G., Wolff, B. (eds) Formal Approaches to Software Testing and Runtime Verification. FATES RV 2006 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4262. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11940197_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11940197_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-49699-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49703-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation