[aosd-discuss] How to define Scattering?

[Eduardo Figueiredo]

Hi Dipankar,

Following up on Marc's trail, you might be interested in a survey of
metrics for quantifying concern scattering/tanling we have recently
concluded. We have defined a set of criteria for analysing scattering
in addition to the concern granularity and program elements under
consideration.

E. Figueiredo,  C. Sant'Anna, A. Garcia, T. Bartolomei, W. Cazzola,
and A. Marchetto. "On the Maintainability of Aspect-Oriented Software:
A Concern-Oriented Measurement Framework". Proc. 12nd European Conf.
Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR), Athens, Greece, April 2008.

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/figueire/publications/csmr08ready.pdf

Cheers,
Eduardo.


On 11/02/2008, Marc Eaddy <me133 at columbia.edu> wrote:
> Hi Dipankar,
>
>         Great question!  "Scattering" means that a concern is implemented by
> more than one program element.  However, this all depends on how you define
> "concern," "implemented," and "program element."  If you define a program
> element as the entire program A, no concerns are scattered.  If you define a
> program element as the individual tokens of program A, most concerns are
> scattered.  A concern may be scattered in program A and not in program B.
>
>         Scattering also depends on the granularity of the concern.  For
> example, a feature concern such as "Draw shapes" is at a higher level of
> granularity than "Draw circles."  In general, scattering is proportional to
> concern granularity level and inversely proportional to program element
> granularity level.
>
>         Probably most troublesome is that "implements" is not an easy
> relationship to decide.  What does it mean to say a piece of code implements
> a concern?  Does the Main function implement every concern? (If so, every
> concern is scattered.)  Determining the relationship between concerns and
> code is called the concept assignment problem.  It is undecidable in
> general.
>
>         Several researchers have created metrics to measure scattering:
>
> F. C. Filho, N. Cacho, E. Figueiredo, R. Maranhao, A. Garcia, and C. M. F.
> Rubira, "Exceptions and Aspects: The Devil is in the Details," Foundations
> of Software Engineering (FSE), 2006.
>
> M. Eaddy, T. Zimmermann, K.D. Sherwood, V. Garg, G.C. Murphy, N. Nagappan,
> and A. Aho, "Do Crosscutting Concerns Cause Defects?," in submission,
> September 2007.
> http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~eaddy/publications/DoCrosscuttingConcernsCauseDe
> fects-JournalSubmission.pdf
>
> Cheers,
>
> Marc Eaddy
> PhD Student
> Columbia University
> http://www.columbia.edu/~me133
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dipankar Majumdar [mailto:mdipankar at aim.com]
> > Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2008 11:15 PM
> > To: discuss at aosd.net
> > Subject: [aosd-discuss] How to define Scattering?
> >
> > Hi All,
> > I am working on Aspect Mining at Jadavpur University, India. It is well
> > known that 'Scattering'  is one of the principal characteristics of any
> > Aspect. Can you please let me know, what is the formal definition of
> > Scattering? Or in other words what are the symptoms that we look for,
> > in order to tell whether a particular 'block of code' is scattered?
> >
> > Regards
> >
> >
> > Dipankar Majumdar
> > Dept. of Information Tech.
> > B.P. Poddar Instt of Mgmt & Tech.
> > Kolkata - 700052
> > India
> > ________________________________
> >
> > More new features than ever. Check out the new AIM(R) Mail
> > <http://o.aolcdn.com/cdn.webmail.aol.com/mailtour/aol/en-
> > us/text.htm?ncid=aimcmp00050000000001> !
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> discuss mailing list    -    discuss at aosd.net
>
> To unsubscribe and change options, go to:
> http://aosd.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss_aosd.net
>
> Check out the AOSD.net Wiki: http://aosd.net/wiki
>


-- 
Eduardo Figueiredo
PhD Student in Computing
Lancaster University
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/figueire/