The aim of Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) is the production of code that is easier to understand and evolve, thanks to the separation of the crosscutting concerns from the principal decomposition. However, AOP languages introduce an implicit coupling between the aspects and the modules in the principal decomposition, in that the latter may be unaware of the presence of aspects that intercept their execution and/or modify their structure. These invisible connections represent the main drawback of AOP. A measuring method is proposed to investigate the trade-off between advantages and disadvantages obtained by using the AOP approach. The method that we are currently studying is based on a metrics suite that extends the metrics traditionally used with the OO paradigm.
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