Detection and Correction of Defects Using Aspect-Oriented Modeling Approaches

Keywords

Defects, detection, correction, Aspect-Oriented Modeling, Java programs.

Description

Software quality is an important goal in the software development process, especially during maintenance, one of the most difficult and expensive phase. However, bad design practices introduce design defects, which make it difficult to add, debug, and evolve software features. Thus, the detection and correction of defects are essential for ensuring software quality.

Several approaches have been proposed to detect design defects and the techniques based on refactorings have proved their efficiency in improving code. However, very few studies have proposed methods/techniques to detect and correct these defects.

Aspect-Oriented Modeling (AOM) approaches appear to be promising for dealing both the detection and correction of defects. Indeed, an aspect model allows specifying i) what we are looking for (pointcut model) e.g., a defect, and ii) how we modify the model fragment corresponding to the pointcut (advice model and composition protocol) e.g., a refactoring.

The main goal of this project is to investigate how AOM approaches could be used to unify the detection and correction of defects. More precisely, it will consist in defining defect detection algorithms for identifying the pointcuts and implementing refactorings corresponding to the advice and protocol. This project will be validated on Java open-source programs using the Kermeta platform and AOM tools implemented in Kermeta, such as SmartAdapters.

Bibliography

Philippe Lahire, Brice Morin, Gilles Vanwormhoudt, Alban Gaignard, Olivier Barais, and Jean-Marc Jézéquel. -- Introducing variability into aspect-oriented modeling approaches. -- In In Proceedings of ACM/IEEE 10th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MoDELS 07), Nashville, TN, USA, October 2007. (http://www.irisa.fr/triskell/publis/2007/Morin07b.pdf)

Naouel Moha, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Laurence Duchien, and Anne-Françoise Le Meur. DECOR: A Method for the Specification and Detection of Code and Design Smells. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (Accepted for publication. To appear soon. http://www.naouelmoha.net/paper/TSE09/Moha09-TSE.pdf)

Naouel Moha, Vincent Mahé, Olivier Barais, and Jean-Marc Jézéquel. Generic Model Refactorings. In Andy Schürr and Bran Selic, editors. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 12th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS 2009), pp. 628–643, October 2009, LNCS 5795, Springer-Verlag. (http://www.naouelmoha.net/paper/MODELS09/Moha09-MODELS.pdf)

Working Environment

• Laboratories:
• IRISA, EPI Triskell (Campus de Beaulieu, Université de Rennes 1, France)

• Scientific Advisors:
• Naouel Moha moha@irisa.fr
• Jean-Marc Jézéquel jezequel@irisa.fr