Design patterns as aspects A quantitative assessm

Authors: Cláudio Sant’Anna Alessandro Garcia Uirá Kulesza Carlos Lucena Arndt von Staa

Publish Date: 2004/06

Volume: 10, Issue: 2, Pages: 49-

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Abstract

Design patterns offer flexible solutions to common problems in software development Recent studies have shown that several design patterns involve crosscutting concerns Unfortunately objectoriented OO abstractions are often not able to modularize those crosscutting concerns which in turn decrease the system reusability and maintainability Hence it is important verifying whether aspectoriented approaches support improved modularization of crosscutting concerns relative to design patterns Ideally quantitative studies should be performed to compare objectoriented and aspectoriented implementations of classical patterns with respect to important software engineering attributes such as coupling and cohesion This paper presents a quantitative study that compares aspectbased and OO solutions for a representative set of design patterns We have used stringent software engineering attributes as the assessment criteria We have found that most aspectoriented solutions improve separation of patternrelated concerns although some aspectoriented implementations of specific patterns resulted in higher coupling and more lines of code

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