From this analysis we have discovered a number of interesting outcomes. Firstly,
the AO implementations tend to have a more stable design when implementing the
design by contract crosscutting concern. Furthermore, changes tended to be much
less intrusive and more simplistic in the AO implementations. This indicates that
aspectual decompositions are superior especially when considering the Open-Closed
principle. In certain circumstances aspectual decompositions tended to propagate to
unrelated components due to ripple-e®ects caused by OO refactorings. In addition,
even with higher reuse, AO implementations tended to present no significant gains
regarding system and design by contract size in relation to OO decompositions as
usually advertised by the literature. The overall conclusion regarding design by contract modularity is that aspect decompositions tended to be much better than
OO in relation to several realistic maintenance scenarios leading to a more stable
design by contract implementation.