Resource-based Verification for Robust Composition of Aspects

Aspect Oriented Software Development has been proposed as a means to improve modularization of software in the presence of crosscutting concerns. Compared to object-oriented or procedural approaches, Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) has not yet been applied in many industrial applications. In this thesis we investigate the application of AOP within an industrial context and propose a novel solution to the problem of behavioral conflicts between aspects. We report on our experience transferring an aspect-oriented solution to a company called Advanced Semi-conductor Material Lithography (ASML). We investigate the acceptance criteria for AOP in industry, based on two industrial cases studies. We present a process that includes quantification of the benefits of AOP and elicitation of key worries expressed by stakeholders. We conducted a controlled experiment to assess the advantages and disadvantages of an aspect-based approach using a tracing example. Twenty developers from ASML were requested to carry out five maintenance scenarios. This experiment has shown that, in case the tracing concern is implemented using an AOP implementation instead of a procedural language, the development effort is on average 6% reduced while the impact of errors is reduced by 77%, for maintaining code related to tracing. For a subset of the scenarios, the results were statistically significant on a confidence interval of 95%.