ConcernTagger

Overview

ConcernTagger is based on the excellent ConcernMapper Eclipse plug-in created by Martin Robillard and Frédéric Weigand-Warr.

Features

• Associate concerns with Java code (types, methods, and fields) using drag-n-drop and right-click
• Supports hierarchical concerns
• Supports multiple concern domains
• Supports multiple concern-code relations (e.g., implements, related-to, contributes-to, executed-by-test-case, depends-on-removal)
• Determine if concerns in one domain (e.g., requirements) are tangled with concerns in another domain (e.g., bugs)
• Label decorations and highlighting make it easy to see which concerns are associated with a type, method, or field
• Computes scattering and size metrics for concerns
  • Concern Diffusion over Components (CDC) (*)
  • Concern Diffusion over Operations (CDO) (*)
  • Degree of Scattering over Classes (DOSC)
  • Degree of Scattering over Methods (DOSM)
  • Source Lines of Concern Code (SLOCC)
  • List and count of tangled concerns
• Import/export concerns and mapping using attribute-relation file format (ARFF) files, a popular format for publishing empirical case study datasets
• Stores concerns, code model, and mappings in an HSQLDB database

Downloads

ConcernTagger

Source code and plug-in for ConcernTagger 2.0.1. Warning: 44 MB!

Case Studies

• Snapshot of the source code
• Concerns we identified
• Mapping of concerns to program elements
• Bugs we identified, including metadata such as developer, severity, etc.
• Mapping of "fixed" bugs to program elements (although for dbviz, we mapped bugs directly to concerns)
• Concern metrics computed for the concern and bug mappings

	Case Studies
	dbviz	Mylyn-Bugzilla	Rhino	iBATIS
Summary	Database schema visualizer	Task-oriented development plug-in for Eclipse	JavaScript compiler/interpreter	Object-relational mapping tool
Download (project snapshot, datasets, and results)	(24 MB)	(48 MB)	(75 MB)	(53 MB)
Application Domain	Databases	Development Tools	Compilers	Databases
Programming Language	Java	Java	Java	Java
Project Size	12.7 KLOC	13.7 KLOC	32.1 KSLOC	13.3 KSLOC
Version	0.5	1.0.1	1.5 (Release 6)	2.3
Concern Assignment Time (hours)	18	31	102	18
Concern Assignment Rate (KSLOC/hr)	.7	.4	.5	.7
Project Website	jdbv.sourceforge.net/dbViz	eclipse.org/mylyn	mozilla.org/rhino	ibatis.apache.org
Source Repository	CVS	CVS	CVS	Subversion
Issue Repository	SourceForge Issue Tracker	Bugzilla	Bugzilla	Jira
Concern Domain Analyzed	Use Cases	Requirements	ECMAScript Specification	Requirements
Bug Assignment Technique	Associated bugs directly with concerns	Associated bugs with program elements	Associated bugs with program elements	Associated bugs with program elements
Bug Assignment Technology	None (Manual)	ConcernTagger (Manual)	BugTagger (Automated)	BugTagger (Automated)

Note: As a by-product of our search for appropriate case studies, we obtained metadata (size, bugs, etc.) for several open source projects. Feel free to download the Excel spreadsheet. Warning: The numbers are rough estimates only and are guaranteed to be out-of-date with the latest versions of the projects.

Related Publications

Marc Eaddy and Alfred Aho, "Towards Assessing the Impact of Crosscutting Concerns on Modularity," AOSD Workshop on Assessment of Aspect Techniques (ASAT 2007), Vancouver, BC, Canada, March 12, 2007. [ pdf ]

A. Garcia, C. Sant'Anna, E. Figueiredo, U. Kulesza, C. Lucena, and A. v. Staa, "Modularizing Design Patterns with Aspects: A Quantitative Study," Aspect Oriented Software Development (AOSD 2005), Chicago, IL, March 14-18, 2005.

Acknowledgements

Vibhav Garg created the initial version of ConcernTagger.

Tom Zimmerman created the BugTagger Eclipse plug-in, which we used to automatically map bugs to program elements for Rhino and iBATIS.

Nachiappan Nagappan computed correlation and regression statistics for the case studies.

Kaitlin Duck Sherwood mapped concerns for Mylyn-Bugzilla with help from Gail Murphy.

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