Measuring the dynamic behaviour of AspectJ programs

Abstract

This paper proposes and implements a rigorous method for studying the dynamic behaviour of AspectJ programs. As part of this methodology several new metrics specific to AspectJ programs are proposed and tools for collecting the relevant metrics are presented. The major tools consist of: (1) a modified version of the AspectJ compiler that tags bytecode instructions with an indication of the cause of their generation, such as a particular feature of AspectJ; and (2) a modified version of the *J dynamic metrics collection tool which is composed of a JVMPI-based trace generator and an analyzer which propagates tags and computes the proposed metrics. This dynamic propagation is essential, and thus this paper contributes not only new metrics, but also non-trivial ways of computing them. We furthermore present a set of benchmarks that exercise a wide range of AspectJ's features, and the metrics that we measured on these benchmarks. The results provide guidance to AspectJ users on how to avoid efficiency pitfalls, to AspectJ implementors on promising areas for future optimization, and to tool builders on ways to understand the runtime behaviour of AspectJ.