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An exploratory study of the effect of aspect-oriented programming on maintainability

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Abstract

In this paper we describe an exploratory assessment of the effect of aspect-oriented programming on software maintainability. An experiment was conducted in which 11 software professionals were asked to carry out maintenance tasks on one of two programs. The first program was written in Java and the second in AspectJ. Both programs implement a shopping system according to the same set of requirements. A number of statistical hypotheses were tested. The results did seem to suggest a slight advantage for the subjects using the object-oriented system since in general it took the subjects less time to answer the questions on this system. Also, both systems appeared to be equally difficult to modify. However, the results did not show a statistically significant influence of aspect-oriented programming at the 5% level. We are aware that the results of this single small study cannot be generalized. We conclude that more empirical research is necessary in this area to identify the benefits of aspect-oriented programming and we hope that this paper will encourage such research.

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Notes

  1. AspectJ, http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj

  2. Java, http://java.sun.com

  3. Both systems are available under: http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/∼sir04mb2/ShopSystem.zip

  4. Eclipse, 2006, http://www.eclipse.org

  5. MiniTab Statistical Software, Release 14.1, http://www.minitab.com/products/minitab/14

  6. AspectJ Development Tools (AJDT), 2006, http://www.eclipse.org/ajdt

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all participants of the pre-pilot study, the pilot study and the experiment for the time and effort they invested as well as all anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AY, UK

    Marc Bartsch

  2. Stratton Edge Consulting, Stratton Edge, School Hill, Cirencester, GL7 2LS, UK

    Rachel Harrison

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  1. Marc Bartsch
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  2. Rachel Harrison
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Correspondence to Marc Bartsch.

Appendix A: Questions

Appendix A: Questions

  1. Q1.

    Please list all classes and aspects, if any exist, that are defined in the source code.

  2. Q2.

    What is the output from this program? Please write down every line that will be printed.

  3. Q3.

    Describe how you would change the program so that an exception will be thrown if a user attempts to use the shop after he has been idle for more than 5 min. Please state clearly every change you would make to the code i.e., every line change, addition or removal of code. The choice of programming language is not important. For a correct solution you can either use Java or AspectJ.

  4. Q4.

    How understandable, on a scale of 1–5, do you think this program is?

   
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Bartsch, M., Harrison, R. An exploratory study of the effect of aspect-oriented programming on maintainability. Software Qual J 16, 23–44 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-007-9022-7

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