TITAN: a Framework for Aspect Oriented System Evolution

Aspect oriented software development provides a suitable support for software system evolution. The system properties are better encapsulated resulting in easier manipulation. Besides, new properties or changes can be added to the systems as new aspects, reducing cost, effort and time. However, adding new aspects to an existing AO system could produce unexpected behaviour. In particular, when there is an aspect already operating in the same joint point that the new one, the two aspects may interfere each other. In this context, TITAN is a framework that supports system evolution through aspect oriented techniques, allowing to verify whether the added behaviour produces the expected results. The starting point is the UML specification of both the initial system and the aspects. From that point, the specification is validated generating a CCS algebraic description of the system. Next, extended (finite) state machines are automatically generated to verify, simulate, and test the modelled system behaviour. Additionally, the result of that process can also be compared with the behaviour of the new running system.