Research Of Aspect-Oriented Refactoring Technique

Refactoring techniques have gained popularity due to their practical value in creatingmore agile code. Refactoring activities usually aim at improving the software quality, makingthem easier to understand, maintain, improvements on the software artifacts. Aspect OrientedProgramming (AOP) is a new programming paradigm that offers a novel modularization unitfor the crosscutting concerns. AOP is receiving an increased attention due to its power inencapsulating crosscutting concerns. Functionalities originally spread across several modulesand tangled with each other can be factored out into a single, separate unit, called an aspect.Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) is a new programming paradigm that offers anovel modularization unit for the crosscutting concerns. Functionalities originally spreadacross several modules and tangled with each other can be factored out into a single, separateunit, called an aspect.We investigated integrated migration strategy based aspect-orientedprogramming refactoring method for manual guidance that can be used to support themigration of existing Object Oriented Programming (OOP) code to AOP. To migrate anapplication to the new paradigm, a preliminary identification of the crosscutting concerns isrequired (aspect mining).Then refactoring is applied to transform the scattered concerns intoaspects. The approach is based upon the iterative application of four steps: mining, classifying,modeling, and refactoring. After mining potential crosscutting concerns, the classifying stepsorts the candidate crosscutting concerns, uses the sorted result to model a method tree andfinds the proper refactoring methods. Finally, the refactoring phase transforms the code bymoving the selected code to a new aspect.We discuss in detail a new approach to aspectrefactoring that is fully integrated with our strategy, and apply the whole strategy to a LoCsystem, namely the JHotDraw framework. We report on our experiences with conducting thiscase study and reflect on the success and challenges of the migration process, as well as onthe feasibility of aspect refactoring.