Creating custom containers with generative techniques

ABSTRACT

Component containers are a key part of mainstream component technologies, and play an important role in separating non-functional concerns from the core component logic. This paper addresses two different aspects of containers. First, it shows how generative programming techniques, using AspectC++ and meta-programming, can be used to generate stubs and skeletons without the need for special compilers or interface description languages. Second, the paper describes an approach to create custom containers by composing different non-functional features. Unlike component technologies such as EJB, which only support a predefined set of container types, this approach allows different combinations of non-functional features to be composed in a container to meet the application needs.

REFERENCES

• 1: R. Aigner, C. Pohl, M. Pohlack, and S. Zschaler. Tailor-made containers: Modeling non-functional middleware service. In Workshop on Models for Non-functional Aspects of Component-Based Software (NfC'04) at UML conference, 2004.
• 2: D. Conan, E. Putrycz, N. Farcet, and M. DeMiguel. Integration of non-functional properties in containers. In Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Component-Oriented Programming (WCOP), 2001.
• 3: Krzysztof Czarnecki , Ulrich W. Eisenecker, Generative programming: methods, tools, and applications, ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, NY, 2000
• 4: Frédéric Duclos , Jacky Estublier , Philippe Morat, Describing and using non functional aspects in component based applications, Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Aspect-oriented software development, April 22-26, 2002, Enschede, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/508386.508394]
• 5: Alois Ferscha , Manfred Hechinger , Rene Mayrhofer , Roy Oberhauser, A Light-Weight Component Model for Peer-to-Peer Applications, Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops - W7: EC (ICDCSW'04), p.520-527, March 23-24, 2004
• 6: Andreas Gal , Olaf Spinczyk , Wolfgang Schröder Preikschat, On Aspect-Orientation in Distributed Real-time Dependable Systems, Proceedings of the The Seventh IEEE International Workshop on Object-Oriented Real-Time Dependable Systems (WORDS 2002), p.261, January 07-09, 2002
• 7: M. Gonzalez Harbour and L. Sha. An application-level implementation of the sporadic server. Technical Report CMU/SEI-91-TR-026, Software Engineering Institute-Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, September 1991.
• 8: John Hatcliff , Xinghua Deng , Matthew B. Dwyer , Georg Jung , Venkatesh Prasad Ranganath, Cadena: an integrated development, analysis, and verification environment for component-based systems, Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, May 03-10, 2003, Portland, Oregon
• 9: S. Hissam, J. Ivers, D. Plakosh, and K. Wallnau. Pin component technology (V1.0) and its C interface. Technical Note CMU/SEI-2005-TN-001, Software Engineering Institute - Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2005.
• 10: S. Hissam, G. Moreno, and K. Wallnau. Using containers to enforce smart constraints for performance in industrial systems. Technical Note CMU/SEI-2005-TN-040, Software Engineering Institute - Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, August 2005.
• 11: JBoss Home Page. http://www.jboss.org.
• 12: Mark H. Klein , Thomas Ralya , Bill Pollak , Ray Obenza , Michael González Harbour, A practitioner's handbook for real-time analysis, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, 1993
• 13: D. Lohmann, G. Blaschke, and O. Spinczyk. Generic advice: On the combination of AOP with generative programming in AspectC++. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE'04), 2004.
• 14: Philip K. McKinley , Seyed Masoud Sadjadi , Eric P. Kasten , Betty H. C. Cheng, Composing Adaptive Software, Computer, v.37 n.7, p.56-64, July 2004 [doi>10.1109/MC.2004.48]
• 15: N. Myers. Traits: A new and useful template technique. C++ Report, June 1995.
• 16: O. Spinczyk, D. Lohmann, and M. Urban. Advances in AOP with AspectC++. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Software Methodologies, Tools, and Techniques, SoMeT'05. IOS Press, 2005.
• 17: O. Spinczyk, D. Lohmann, and M. Urban. Aspectc++: An AOP extension for C++. Software Developer's Journal, June 2005.
• 18: Spring Framework Home Page. http://www.springframework.org.
• 19: T. Veldhuizen. Using C++ template metaprograms. C++ Report, 7(4):36--43, May 1995.
• 20: K. Wallnau. Volume III: A technology for predictable assembly from certifiable components (PACC). Technical Report CMU/SEI-2003-TR-009, Software Engineering Institute - Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2003.
• 21: K. Wallnau and J. Ivers. Snapshot of CCL: A language for predictable assembly. Technical Note CMU/SEI-2003-TN-025, Software Engineering Institute - Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, June 2003.
• 22: N. Wang, D. Schmidt, O. Othman, and K. Parameswaran. Evaluating meta-programming mechanisms for ORB middleware. IEEE Communications Magazine, 39, 2001.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES
      D.1.2 Automatic Programming

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.13 Reusable Software

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
AspectC++, aspect-oriented programming, component, container, generative programming, meta-programming, non-functional concern