Improving robustness of evolving exceptional behaviour in executable models

ABSTRACT

Executable models are increasingly being employed by development teams to implement robust software systems. Modern executable models offer powerful composition mechanisms that allow developers to deliver a running system in small increments and in a time-effective fashion. Such models act like code by providing high-level development abstractions and, as a consequence, it is expected that increased software robustness is achieved. However, existing executable models have a number of limitations on the representation of exceptional behaviour. Similarly to exception handling in programming languages, one of the key problems is that the modelling languages and supporting environments do not allow the explicit specification of global exception flows. They require that developers understand the source of an exception, the place where it is handled, and everything in between. As system development evolves, exceptional control flows become less well-understood, with negative consequences for the program maintainability and robustness. In this paper, we claim that such problem can be addressed by an innovative exception handling model which provides abstractions to explicitly describe global views of exceptional control flows. The implementation of our proposed model extends the aspect-oriented language constructs and the control-flow analysis of the Motorola WEAVR with the aim of promoting enhanced robustness and program modularization.

REFERENCES

• 1: P. A. Lee , T. Anderson , J. C. Laprie , A. Avizienis , H. Kopetz, Fault Tolerance: Principles and Practice, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., Secaucus, NJ, 1990
• 2: Grady Booch , James Rumbaugh , Ivar Jacobson, Unified Modeling Language User Guide, The (2nd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series), Addison-Wesley Professional, 2005
• 3: Nelio Cacho , Fernando Castor Filho , Alessandro Garcia , Eduardo Figueiredo, EJFlow: taming exceptional control flows in aspect-oriented programming, Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Aspect-oriented software development, March 31-April 04, 2008, Brussels, Belgium [doi>10.1145/1353482.1353492]
• 4: Cargill, T. Exception Handling: A False Sense of Security. C++ Report, vol. 6, no. 9, pp. 21--24, Nov.-Dec. 1994.
• 5: Castor Filho, F., Brito, P. H. S., and Rubira, C. M. F. Specification of exception Flow in software architectures. Journal of Systems and Software, 79(10):1397.
• 6: Cottenier, T., van den Berg, A., Elrad, T. Joinpoint Inference from Behavioral Specification to Implementation, In Proceedings of the 21st European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP'07), Berlin, Germany, LNCS 4609, Springer-Verlag, July 2007.
• 7: Cottenier, T., van den Berg, A., Elrad, T. The Motorola WEAVR: Model Weaving in a Large Industrial Context, In Proceedings of the Industry Track at the 6th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD'07). March 2007.
• 8: Susan Entwisle , Heinz Schmidt , Ian Peake , Elizabeth Kendall, A Model Driven Exception Management Framework for Developing Reliable Software Systems, Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, p.307-318, October 16-20, 2006 [doi>10.1109/EDOC.2006.10]
• 9: David Harel, Statecharts: A visual formalism for complex systems, Science of Computer Programming, v.8 n.3, p.231-274, June 1, 1987 [doi>10.1016/0167-6423(87)90035-9]
• 10: Hong, H. S., Kim, Y. G., Cha S. D., Bae D.-H. and Ural, H. A Test Sequence Selection Method for Statecharts. STVR, 10(4):203--227, 2000.
• 11: Kiczales, G. et al. Aspect-oriented programming. In Proceedings of ECOOP'97, pages 220--242, 1997.
• 12: Malayeri, D. and Aldrich, J. Practical Exception Specifications. Advanced Topics in Exception Handling Techniques, LNCS, 2006.
• 13: Stephen J. Mellor , Scott Kendall , Axel Uhl , Dirk Weise, MDA Distilled, Addison Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Redwood City, CA, 2004
• 14: Stephen J. Mellor , Marc Balcer , Ivar Jacoboson, Executable UML: A Foundation for Model-Driven Architectures, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 2002
• 15: Mustafiz, S. Sun, X. Kienzle, J. and Vangheluwe, H. 2006. Model-Driven Assessment of Use Cases for Dependable Systems. In 9th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems -- MoDELS 2006, Genova, Italy, Oct. 1--6, 2006, no. 4199 in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 558--573, Springer Verlag.
• 16: Pintér, G. and Majzik, I. Modeling and Analysis of Exception Handling by Using UML Statecharts. FIDJI 2004. 58--67.
• 17: Martin P. Robillard , Gail C. Murphy, Designing robust Java programs with exceptions, Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering: twenty-first century applications, p.2-10, November 06-10, 2000, San Diego, California, United States
• 18: Martin P. Robillard , Gail C. Murphy, Static analysis to support the evolution of exception structure in object-oriented systems, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), v.12 n.2, p.191-221, April 2003 [doi>10.1145/941566.941569]
• 19: Shui, A., Mustafiz, S., Kienzle, J., Dony, C. Exceptional use cases. In Briand, L. C., Williams, C., eds.: MoDELS. Volume 3713 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science., Springer (2005) 568--583
• 20: Clemens Szyperski, Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 2002

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: Modules and interfaces

General Terms:
Design, Reliability

Keywords:
aspect-oriented programming, exception control flow, exception handling, model-driven software development, modularity