research-article

Join point interfaces for safe and flexible decoupling of aspects

Authors:

Milton InostrozaAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Volume 23, Issue 1

Article No.: 7, Pages 1 - 41

https://doi.org/10.1145/2559933

Published: 20 February 2014 Publication History

Abstract

In current aspect-oriented systems, aspects usually carry, through their pointcuts, explicit references to the base code. Those references are fragile and hinder important software engineering properties such as modular reasoning and independent evolution of aspects and base code. In this work, we introduce a novel abstraction called Join Point Interface, which, by design, aids modular reasoning and independent evolution by decoupling aspects from base code and by providing a modular type-checking algorithm. Join point interfaces can be used both with implicit announcement through pointcuts, and with explicit announcement, using closure join points. Join point interfaces further offer polymorphic dispatch on join points, with an advice-dispatch semantics akin to multimethods. To support flexible join point matching, we incorporate into our language an earlier proposal for generic advice, and introduce a mechanism for controlled global quantification. We motivate each language feature in detail, showing that it is necessary to obtain a language design that is both type safe and flexible enough to support typical aspect-oriented programming idioms. We have implemented join point interfaces as an open-source extension to AspectJ. A case study on existing aspect-oriented programs supports our design, and in particular shows the necessity of both generic interfaces and some mechanism for global quantification.

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Cited By

Leger PMasuhara HFigueroa I(2020)Interfaces for Modular Reasoning in Context-Oriented ProgrammingProceedings of the 12th ACM International Workshop on Context-Oriented Programming and Advanced Modularity10.1145/3422584.3423152(1-7)Online publication date: 21-Jul-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3422584.3423152
Vidal-Silva CMadariaga EPham TJohnson FUrzua LCarter L(2019)JPIAspectZ: A Formal Requirement Specification Language for Joint Point Interface AOP ApplicationsEngineering, Technology & Applied Science Research10.48084/etasr.27749:4(4338-4341)Online publication date: 10-Aug-2019
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Tabareau NTanter É(2019)Chemical foundations of distributed aspectsDistributed Computing10.1007/s00446-018-0334-632:3(193-216)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019
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Index Terms

Join point interfaces for safe and flexible decoupling of aspects
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology Volume 23, Issue 1

February 2014

354 pages

ISSN:1049-331X

EISSN:1557-7392

DOI:10.1145/2582050

Editor:
David S. Rosenblum

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 20 February 2014

Accepted: 01 January 2013

Revised: 01 January 2013

Received: 01 May 2012

Published in TOSEM Volume 23, Issue 1

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Leger PMasuhara HFigueroa I(2020)Interfaces for Modular Reasoning in Context-Oriented ProgrammingProceedings of the 12th ACM International Workshop on Context-Oriented Programming and Advanced Modularity10.1145/3422584.3423152(1-7)Online publication date: 21-Jul-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3422584.3423152
Vidal-Silva CMadariaga EPham TJohnson FUrzua LCarter L(2019)JPIAspectZ: A Formal Requirement Specification Language for Joint Point Interface AOP ApplicationsEngineering, Technology & Applied Science Research10.48084/etasr.27749:4(4338-4341)Online publication date: 10-Aug-2019
https://doi.org/10.48084/etasr.2774
Tabareau NTanter É(2019)Chemical foundations of distributed aspectsDistributed Computing10.1007/s00446-018-0334-632:3(193-216)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00446-018-0334-6
Schuster SSeidl CSchaefer ISimmonds JWalkingshaw E(2017)Towards a development process for maturing Delta-oriented software product linesProceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development10.1145/3141848.3141853(41-50)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2017
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Rebêlo HLeavens G(2017)Aspect-Oriented Programming ReloadedProceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages10.1145/3125374.3125383(1-8)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2017
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Khatchadourian RRashid AMasuhara HWatanabe T(2017)Detecting broken pointcuts using structural commonality and degree of interestScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2017.06.011150(56-74)Online publication date: Dec-2017
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2017.06.011
Vidal CBenavides DLeger PGalindo JFukuda H(2016)Mixing of Join Point Interfaces and Feature-Oriented Programming for Modular Software Product LineProceedings of the 9th EAI International Conference on Bio-inspired Information and Communications Technologies (formerly BIONETICS)10.4108/eai.3-12-2015.2262534(433-437)Online publication date: 24-May-2016
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Hadas ALorenz DFuentes LBatory DCzarnecki K(2016)Application-specific language-oriented modularity: a case study of the ovirt projectCompanion Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity10.1145/2892664.2892692(178-183)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2016
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Sánchez JLeavens GFuentes LBatory DCzarnecki K(2016)Reasoning tradeoffs in languages with enhanced modularity featuresProceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity10.1145/2889443.2889447(13-24)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2016
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Long YRajan HFuentes LBatory DCzarnecki K(2016)A type-and-effect system for asynchronous, typed eventsProceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity10.1145/2889443.2889446(42-53)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2016
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