ConAn: A Tool for the Identification of Crosscutting Concerns in Object Oriented Systems Based on Type Hierarchy Analysis

In Object Oriented systems the analysis of Type Hierarchies allows to identify class members that are scattered and tangled along each hierarchy, thus contributing to the implementation of static crosscutting concerns. This paper presents ConAn: a tool to automatically analyze the Type Hierarchies in an existing system and to identify the Type Fragments (i.e. a portion of a Type in terms of its members and relationships) implementing static crosscutting concerns. The structural information about the Type Fragments composing each concern and the crosscutting relationships among them are useful to drive their re-engineering towards Aspects.