An Experiment in Using Inductive Logic Programming to Uncover Pointcuts

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the transformation from pre-AOP legacy software to aspect-oriented software. To factor out crosscutting concerns from such software we propose the use of techniques to automate the task of uncovering pointcuts. We discuss problems inherent in this task and propose the use of inductive reasoning techniques for the automation. We apply such a technique to one kind of aspects: unique methods which can be found in a standard Smalltalk image.