Towards a Unified Framework for Cohesion Measurement in Aspect-Oriented Systems

Abstract

Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is an emerging technique that provides a means to cleanly encapsulate and implement aspects that crosscut other modules. However, despite an interesting body of work for measuring cohesion in Aspect-Oriented (AO) Systems, there is poor understanding of cohesion in the context of AOP. Most of the proposed cohesion assessment framework and metrics for AOP are for AspectJ programming language. In this paper we have defined a generic cohesion framework that takes into account two, the most well known families of available AOP languages, AspectJ and CaesarJ. This unified framework contributes in better understanding of cohesion in AOP, witch can contribute in (i) comparing measures and their potential use, (ii) integrating different existing measures which examine the same concept in different ways, and (iii) defining new cohesion metrics, which in turn permits the analysis and comparison of Java, AspectJ and CaesarJ implementations.