Using aspect-orientation in industrial projects: appreciated or damned?

ABSTRACT

Aspect-orientation (AO) is a recent technology for handling crosscutting concerns in a structured and modular manner. In spite of being considered useful, researchers often complain that industry is not widely adopting AO concepts and technologies in commercial projects.

This paper reports on real usage of aspect-orientation in an industrial project, which means that AO, in particular the AspectJ language, is part of a real software product. AO is basically used to overcome several critical problems. Those problems are well motivated and discussed in detail. Some of them are hard to solve with conventional programming techniques whereas the application of an appropriate AO-based solution is very straightforward. Since some of the reported problems are not really of crosscutting nature, the solutions might be questionable. This leads to a discussion about the "political correctness" of this approach. Furthermore, the paper also explains why and how the project management could be convinced to use AspectJ.

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INDEX TERMS

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

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.4 Systems
          Subjects: Relational databases

General Terms:
Languages, Management, Performance, Reliability

Keywords:
aspect-orientation; aspectj; crosscutting concern; case study; experience report