Non-modularity in aspect-oriented languages: integration as a crosscutting concern for AspectJ

ABSTRACT

Aspect-oriented (AO) methods and languages seek to enable the preservation of design modularity through mappings to program structures, especially where common (object-oriented) languages fail to do so. The general claim is made that AO approaches enable the modularization of crosscutting concerns. The problem that we address is that it is unclear to what extent such claims are valid. We argue that there are meaningful bounds on the abilities of past, present, and future languages to succeed in this regard---bounds that we need to understand better. To make this idea concrete we exhibit a significant bound: Component integration (Sullivan & Notkin 1992, 1994) is not adequately modularizable in AspectJ

REFERENCES

• 1: Xerox Corporation, AspectJ Team, The AspectJ Programming Guide, 2001, available at URL http://www.aspectj.org/ as of this writing.
• 2: 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]
• 3: Erich Gamma , Richard Helm , Ralph Johnson , John Vlissides, Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1995
• 4: Kalet, I. J., J. P. Jacky, M.M Austin-Seymour, S. M. Hummel, K. J. Sullivan and J. M. Unger, "Prism: a New Approach to

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.3 Coding Tools and Techniques
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications
          Subjects: Design languages
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features
          Subjects: Modules, packages

General Terms:
Design, Languages

Keywords:
aspect, integration, non-modularity