Automated Testing of Aspect-Oriented Programs
Tao Xie
Abstract

The behavior of an aspect in aspect-oriented programs (such as AspectJ
programs) can be categorized into two types: aspectual behavior
(behavior implemented in pieces of advice) and aspectual composition
behavior (behavior implemented in pointcuts for composition between
base and aspectual behavior). To reduce the manual effort of testing
aspects in AspectJ programs, we have developed a framework, called
Aspectra, that automates generation of test inputs for testing
aspectual behavior. To test aspects, developers construct base classes
into which the aspects are woven to form woven classes. Our approach
leverages existing test-generation tools to generate test inputs for
the woven classes; these test inputs indirectly exercise the
aspects. To enable aspects to be exercised during test generation,
Aspectra automatically synthesizes appropriate wrapper classes for
woven classes. We have also developed another framework called Raspect
for detecting redundant tests for aspects. To reduce the manual
efforts in testing pointcuts, we have developed another framework that
uses mutation testing of pointcuts to define coverage criteria and
automates test generation, mutatant generation, and test
selection. The selected tests together with the corresponding killed
mutants can be inspected by testers for verifying the ponitcut under
test.

Bio: Tao Xie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer
Science at North Carolina State University. He received his Ph.D. in
Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2005, advised by
David Notkin, an M.S. in Computer Science from Peking University in
2000, advised by Hong Mei, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Fudan
University in 1997. His research interests are in software
engineering, with an emphasis on automated software testing and
verification, mining software engineering data, software security
testing and analysis, testing and analysis of aspect-oriented
programs, testing and analysis of web services and applications,
software evolution, and program comprehension. He has served on
program committees of ASE 2006/2007, ISSRE 2006, and AOSD 2007 as well
as a number of international conferences and workshops. Besides doing
research, he has contributed to understanding the software engineering
research community.

Home page: http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/xie/