AspectMaps: extending moose to visualize AOP software

Abstract

When using aspect-oriented programming the application implicitly invokes the functionality contained in the aspects. Consequently program comprehension of such a software is more intricate. To alleviate this difficulty we developed the AspectMaps visualization and tool. AspectMaps extends the Moose program comprehension and reverse engineering platform with support for aspects, and is implemented using facilities provided by Moose. In this paper we present the AspectMaps tool, and show how it can be used by performing an exploration of a fairly large aspect-oriented application. We then show how we extended the FAMIX meta-model family that underpins Moose to also provide support for aspects. This extension is called ASPIX, and thanks to this enhancement Moose can now also treat aspect-oriented software. Finally, we report on our experiences using some of the tools in Moose; Mondrian to implement the visualization, and Glamour to build the user interface. We discuss how we were able to implement a sizable visualization tool using them and how we were able to deal with some of their limitations.