Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)This paper presents an in-depth study of the adequacy of the AspectJ language for modularizing and reusing exception-handling code. The study consisted of refactoring existing applications so that the code responsible for implementing error-handling strategies was moved to newly created exception handier aspects. We have performed quantitative assessments of five systems-four object-oriented and one aspect-oriented-based on four key quality attributes, namely separation of concerns, coupling, cohesion, and conciseness. Our investigation also included a multi-perspective analysis of the refactored systems, including (i) the extent to which error-handling aspects can be reused, (ii) the beneficial and harmful aspectization scenarios for exception handling, and (iii) the scalability of AOP to support the modularization of exception handling in the presence of other aspects. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.391713771417Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)National Institute of Science and Technology for Software Engineering (INES)FACEPECoordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)FACEPE/Brazil[573964/2008-4][APQ-1037-1.03/08]Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)CNPq [481147/2007-1, 550895/2007-8, 308383/2008-7, 301446/ 2006-7, 484138/2006-5][573964/2008-4][APQ-1037-1.03/08]