A case for explicit join point models for aspect-oriented intermediate languages

ABSTRACT

Aspect-oriented languages mostly employ implicit language-defined join point models, where well-defined points in the program are called join points and declarative predicates are used to quantify them. The primary motivation for using an implicit join point model is obliviousness and ease of quantification. A design choice for aspect-oriented intermediate languages is to mirror the source language model. In this position paper, I argue that an explicit join point model is better suited at the intermediate language level and sketch a preliminary solution.

REFERENCES

• 1: AJDT:AspectJ development tools. http://www.eclipse.org/ajdt/.
• 2: Jonathan Aldrich. Open modules: Modular reasoning about advice. In Proc. 2005 European Conf. Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 05), pages 144--168, July 2005.
• 3: AspectJ programming guide. http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/.
• 4: Christoph Bockisch , Sebastian Kanthak , Michael Haupt , Matthew Arnold , Mira Mezini, Efficient control flow quantification, Proceedings of the 21st annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications, October 22-26, 2006, Portland, Oregon, USA
• 5: Curtis Clifton and Gary T. Leavens. Obliviousness, modular reasoning, and the behavioral subtyping analogy. Technical Report TR03-01a, Iowa State University, January 2003.
• 6: Curtis Clifton and Gary T. Leavens. A design discipline and language features for modular reasoning in aspect-oriented programs. Technical Report 05-23, Department of Computer Science, Iowa State University, December 2005.
• 7: Curtis Clifton and Gary T. Leavens. MiniMAO1: Investigating the semantics of proceed. Science of Computer Programming, 2006.
• 8: C. Constantinides and T. Skotiniotis. Reasoning about a classification of cross-cutting concerns in object-oriented systems. In Pascal Costanza, Günter Kniesel, Katharina Mehner, Elke Pulvermüller, and Andreas Speck, editors, Second Workshop on Aspect-Oriented Software Development of the German Information Society. Institut für Informatik III, Universität Bonn, February 2002. Technical report IAI-TR-2002-1.
• 9: Tzilla Elrad , Robert E. Filman , Atef Bader, Aspect-oriented programming: Introduction, Communications of the ACM, v.44 n.10, p.29-32, Oct. 2001 [doi>10.1145/383845.383853]
• 10: R. E. Filman and D. P. Friedman. Aspect-oriented programming is quantification and obliviousness. In Workshop on Advanced Separation of Concerns (OOPSLA 2000), October 2000.
• 11: Robert E. Filman and Daniel P. Friedman. Aspect-oriented programming is quantification and obliviousness. In Aspect-oriented Software Development, pages 21--35. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2004.
• 12: Robert E. Filman and Daniel P. Friedman. Aspect-oriented programming is quantification and obliviousness. pages 21--35. Addison-Wesley, Boston, 2005.
• 13: William G. Griswold , Kevin Sullivan , Yuanyuan Song , Macneil Shonle , Nishit Tewari , Yuanfang Cai , Hridesh Rajan, Modular Software Design with Crosscutting Interfaces, IEEE Software, v.23 n.1, p.51-60, January 2006 [doi>10.1109/MS.2006.24]
• 14: Bruno Harbulot , John R. Gurd, A join point for loops in AspectJ, Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Aspect-oriented software development, March 20-24, 2006, Bonn, Germany [doi>10.1145/1119655.1119666]
• 15: Gregor Kiczales , Erik Hilsdale , Jim Hugunin , Mik Kersten , Jeffrey Palm , William G. Griswold, An Overview of AspectJ, Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, p.327-353, June 18-22, 2001
• 16: Gregor Kiczales , John Lamping , Christina Videira Lopes , Chris Maeda , Anurag Mendhekar , Gail Murphy, Open implementation design guidelines, Proceedings of the 19th international conference on Software engineering, p.481-490, May 17-23, 1997, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/253228.253431]
• 17: Gregor Kiczales, John Lamping, Anurag Mendhekar, Chris Maeda, Cristina Videira Lopes, Jean-Marc Loingtier, and John Irwin. Aspect-oriented programming. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), Finland, June 1997. Springer-Verlag.
• 18: Gregor Kiczales and Mira Mezini. Separation of concerns with procedures, annotations, advice and pointcuts. In ECOOP 2005 -- Object-Oriented Programming, 19th European Conference, Glasgow, UK, July 25-29, 2005, Proceedings, volume 3586 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 195--213. Springer, 2005.
• 19: Jay Ligatti , David Walker , Steve Zdancewic, A type-theoretic interpretation of pointcuts and advice, Science of Computer Programming, v.63 n.3, p.240-266, 15 December 2006 [doi>10.1016/j.scico.2006.01.004]
• 20: Bruce J. MacLennan, Principles of programming languages: design, evaluation, and implementation (2nd ed.), Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Austin, TX, 1986
• 21: Hridesh Rajan, Robert Dyer, Youssef Hanna, and Harish Narayanappa. Preserving separation of concerns through compilation. In Lodewijk Bergmans, Johan Brichau, and Erik Ernst, editors, In Software Engineering Properties of Languages and Aspect Technologies (SPLAT 06), A workshop affiliated with AOSD 2006, March 2006.
• 22: Hridesh Rajan, Robert Dyer, Harish Narayanappa, and Youssef Hanna. Nu: Towards an aspect-oriented invocation mechanism. Technical Report 414, Iowa State University, Department of Computer Science, Mar 2006.
• 23: Hridesh Rajan , Kevin Sullivan, Eos: instance-level aspects for integrated system design, Proceedings of the 9th European software engineering conference held jointly with 11th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering, September 01-05, 2003, Helsinki, Finland
• 24: Hridesh Rajan , Kevin Sullivan, Aspect language features for concern coverage profiling, Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Aspect-oriented software development, p.181-191, March 14-18, 2005, Chicago, Illinois [doi>10.1145/1052898.1052914]
• 25: Kevin Sullivan , William G. Griswold , Yuanyuan Song , Yuanfang Cai , Macneil Shonle , Nishit Tewari , Hridesh Rajan, Information hiding interfaces for aspect-oriented design, Proceedings of the 10th European software engineering conference held jointly with 13th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering, September 05-09, 2005, Lisbon, Portugal

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features
          Subjects: Control structures

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.4 Processors

General Terms:
Languages

Keywords:
Nu AO intermediate language, aspect-oriented intermediate languages, explicit join point models, implicit join point models