Aspect] is a simple and practical aspect-oriented extension to Java With just a few new constructs, AspectJ provides support for modular implementation of a range of crosscutting concerns. In AspectJ's dynamic join point model, join points are well-defined points in the execution of the program; pointcuts are collections of join points; advice are special method-like constructs that can be attached to pointcuts; and aspects are modular units of crosscutting implementation, comprising pointcuts, advice, and ordinary Java member declarations. AspectJ code is compiled into standard Java bytecode. Simple extensions to existing Java development environments make it possible to browse the crosscutting structure of aspects in the same kind of way as one browses the inheritance structure of classes. Several examples show that AspectJ is powerful, and that programs written using it are easy to understand.

An overview of AspectJ

Control and data flow structural testing criteria for aspect-oriented programs

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) provides new modularization of software systems by encapsulating cross-cutting concerns. AspectJ, an AOP language, uses abstractions such as pointcuts, advice, and aspects to achieve AOPpsilas primary functionality. Faults in pointcuts can cause aspects to fail to satisfy their requirements. Hence, testing pointcuts is necessary in order to ensure correctness of aspects. In mutation testing of pointcuts (a type of fault-based pointcut testing), the number of mutants (i.e., variations) for pointcuts is usually large due to the usage of wildcards. It is tedious to manually identify effective mutants that are of appropriate strength and resemble closely the original pointcut expression, reflecting the kind of mistakes that developers may make. To reduce developerspsila effort in this process, we have developed a new framework that automatically identifies the strength of each pointcut and generates pointcut mutants with different strengths. Developers can inspect the pointcut mutants and their join points for pointcut correctness or choose the mutants for conducting mutation testing. We conducted an empirical study on applying our framework on pointcuts from existing AspectJ programs. The results show that our framework can provide valuable assistance in generating effective mutants that are close to the original pointcuts and are of appropriate strength.

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Automated Generation of Pointcut Mutants for Testing Pointcuts in AspectJ Programs

Fault-based testing is an approach where the designed test data is used to demonstrate the absence of a set of prespecified faults, typically being frequently occurring faults Mutation testing is a fault-based testing technique used to inject faults into an existing program, ie, a variation of the original program and see if the test suite is sensitive enough to detect common faults Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) provides new modularization of software systems by encapsulating crosscutting concerns AspectJ, a language designed to support AOP uses abstractions like pointcuts, advice, and aspects to achieve AOP?s primary functionality Developers tend to write pointcut expressions with incorrect strength, thereby selecting additional events than intended to or leaving out necessary events This incorrect strength causes aspects, the set of crosscutting concerns, to fail Hence there is a need to test the pointcuts for their strength Mutation testing of pointcuts includes two steps: creating effective mutants (variations) of a pointcut expression and testing these mutants using the designed test data The number of mutants for a pointcut expression is usually large due to the usage of wildcards It is tedious to manually identify effective mutants that are of appropriate strength and resemble closely the original pointcut expression Our framework automatically generates mutants for a pointcut expression and identifies mutants that resemble closely the original expression Then the developers could use the test data for the woven classes against these mutants to perform mutation testing

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Efficient Mutant Generation for Mutation Testing of Pointcuts in Aspect-Oriented Programs

Mutation technique in software testing is considered as the most fascinating way to validate the software under analysis. In last decade, many researchers developed various techniques and tools to apply mutation testing for Aspect Oriented Programs. In this paper, authors surveyed several mutation testing techniques based approaches available to test the aspect oriented programs. Along with mutation testing techniques, various AOP testing tools have also been considered and analyzed based on essential requirements need to fill by these tools, discussed by several researchers. This paper analyzed the research work on mutation testing techniques and mutation tools for aspect oriented programs. Paper considered different parameters on which the analysis of mutation testing techniques and tool is carried out. In addition of few other parameters considered for evaluation, some of the resultant metrics may vary slightly under modification in basic requirements. Based on the numeric value calculated, it is finally suggested, which mutation tool may be much better and under what circumstances.

A systematic review on fault based mutation testing techniques and tools for Aspect-J programs

Unit testing of aspects can verify aspects implementations of aspects against their specification. Current technique for unit testing of aspects requires to weave the aspect definition into a target program, which thus makes it difficult to write comprehensive test cases and to avoid interference from other aspects. In this paper, we propose a framework for unit testing aspects without weaving. Our framework generates testing methods from an aspect definition so that test cases can directly verify properties of aspects such as the advice behavior and pointcut matching.

Y.Yamazaki Y.Yamazaki

Papers

A Unit Testing Framework for Aspects without Weaving