Addressing common crosscutting problems with Arcum

ABSTRACT

Crosscutting is an inherent part of software development and can typically be managed through modularization: A module's stable properties are defined in an interface while its likely-to-change properties are encapsulated within the module [19]. The crosscutting of the stable properties, such as class and method names, can be mitigated with automated refactoring tools that allow, for example, the interface's elements to be renamed [9, 18]. However, often the crosscutting from design idioms (such as design patterns and coding styles) are so specific to the program's domain that their crosscutting would not likely have been anticipated by the developers of an automated refactoring system.

The Arcum plug-in for Eclipse enables programmers to describe the implementation of a crosscutting design idiom as a set of syntactic patterns and semantic constraints. Arcum can process declarations of related implementations and infer the refactoring steps necessary to transform a program from using one implementation to its alternatives. As a result, automating refactoring for domain-specific crosscutting design idioms can be easy and practical. This paper presents a case study of how Arcum was used to mitigate four classic software engineering problems that are exacerbated by crosscutting: library migration, debugging, programmer-defined semantic checking, and architectural enforcement.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures
            Subjects: Domain-specific architectures

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures
            Subjects: Patterns (e.g., client/server, pipeline, blackboard); Languages (e.g., description, interconnection, definition)

General Terms:
Design, Languages

Keywords:
aspect-oriented programming, design patterns, refactoring