A Taxonomy of Interactions Introduced by Aspects

Aspects have a large impact on the static structure and dynamic behaviour of the system they belong. This is due to the intrinsic intrusive nature of aspects and the woven process allowing the alteration of the structure, the control and data flow of the components of the base system in aspect oriented (AO) systems. Several and different types of interactions among aspects and the other components can be introduced according to the different mechanisms provided by AO Programming. These interactions can make higher the complexity of the overall system affecting its comprehension. In this paper we propose a taxonomy to categorize these types of interactions among aspects and the components of the base system. The taxonomy can be used to understand how each type of interaction affects the complexity, and thus the comprehensibility, of the system.