Adequate Testing of Aspect - Oriented Programs *

Aspect-oriented programming supports the separation of concerns into traditional core concerns and cross-cutting aspects. Aspects typically contain new code fragments that are introduced to the system (such as advice or introductions) and a means of quantification that specifies where these code fragments are to be inserted. Although powerful, aspect-oriented programming includes new sources for program faults. These faults may be due to errors in the aspect-based code fragments or in the quantification directives. To address both sources of error, we propose combining two traditional techniques to adequately test aspect-oriented software: white box coverage and mutation testing. We use static analysis of an aspect within a system to guide in the selection of white box criteria for an aspect (such as statement coverage, context coverage, and def-use coverage) that will determine if a test suite is adequately testing the new code fragments. In addition, we provide a set of mutation operators to evaluate if a test suite is sufficiently sensitive to find errors in pointcuts and aspect precedence. Together, coverage criteria and mutation testing provide a framework for defining adequate testing of aspect-oriented programs.