An Aspect-Oriented Approach to Modular Behavioral Specification

Behavioral interface specification languages, such as Java Modeling Language (JML), can be used to specify the behavior of program modules. We have developed a behavioral interface specification language Moxa, an extension of JML. Moxa provides a new modularization mechanism called assertion aspect that can capture the crosscutting properties among assertions. In this paper, we briefly explain the notion of assertion aspects and the design of Moxa, and then we show an example specification. By comparing the specification to its JML counterpart, we show that the use of assertion aspects clarifies the large, complex specification and greatly simplifies each assertion in the specification.