Independent Extensibility for Aspect-Oriented Systems
Pascal Costanza, Günter Kniesel, Michael Austermann · 2001
So far, there is no satisfactory means to safely combine aspects that have been developed independently. In the general case, the process of jointly applying different aspects is not guaranteed to produce complete and unambiguous results. This paper shows that in the relevant case of pure interface modifications, completeness, uniqueness and independent extensibility can be ensured. This results in a strong reduction of the conceptual complexity of aspect combination. This idea has been incorporated into JMangler, a framework for loadtime transformation of Java classes that can be used as a "back end" for arbitrary AOP systems. 1 Motivation 1.1 Unanticipated Adaptations Software requirements are in a constant flux. Some changes in requirements can be anticipated by software developers, so that the necessary adaptations can be prepared for, for example by suitable parameterization or by application of dedicated design patterns. Within the scope of these anticipated options for adapta...