Data-flow and Control-flow Analysis of AspectJ Software for Program Slicing

We propose an approach for program slicing of AspectJ software, based on a novel data-flow and control-flow program representation. The representation is built at the source-code level and, unlike previous work, captures the semantic intricacies of various pointcut designators, multiple advices per joint point, dynamic advices, exceptions, and general flow of data to, from, and between advices. We also present algorithms for dependence analysis, system dependence graph construction, and slicing of AspectJ programs. These algorithms are built on top of the proposed representation, and take into account the complex flow of data and control due to aspect-oriented features. We present an experimental study on 37 programs, using our AJANA analysis framework which is based on the abc AspectJ compiler. The results show that the representation can be built efficiently, that it is superior to an approach based on the woven bytecode, and that slicing is both faster and more precise. These findings strongly indicate that the proposed general approach is a promising solution for slicing and similar analyses of AspectJ software, in various tools for program comprehension, change impact analysis, program integration, software testing, and software debugging.