Towards a tool supporting integration testing of aspect-oriented programs

Abstract

Aspect-Oriented Programming is an emerging software engineering paradigm. It offers new constructs and tools improving separation of crosscutting concerns into single units called aspects. AspectJ, the most used aspect-oriented programming language, represents an extension of Java. In fact, existing object-oriented programming languages suffer from a serious limitation in modularizing adequately crosscutting concerns in a program. Many concerns crosscut several classes in an object-oriented system. However, new dependencies between aspects and classes result in new testing challenges. Interactions between aspects and classes are new sources for program faults. Moreover, existing object-oriented testing methods (unit and integration testing) are not well adapted to the aspect technology. As a consequence, new testing techniques must be developed for aspect-oriented programs. We present, in this paper, a new aspects-classes integration testing strategy and the associated tool. The adopted approach consists of two main phases: (1) static analysis: generating testing sequences based on dynamic interactions between aspects and classes, (2) dynamic analysis: verifying the execution of the selected sequences. We focus, in particular, on the integration of one or more aspects in the control of collaborating classes. © JOT, 2007.