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2006 | Book

On Horizontal Specification Architectures and Their Aspect-Oriented Implementations Read chapter Read first chapter

Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development II

Editors: Awais Rashid, Mehmet Aksit

Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Book Series : Lecture Notes in Computer Science

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

The LNCS Jounal on Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development is devoted to all facets of aspect-oriented software development (AOSD) techniques in the context of all phases of the software life cycle, from requirements and design to implementation, maintenance and evolution. The focus of the journal is on approaches for systematic identification, modularization, representation and composition of crosscutting concerns, i.e., the aspects and evaluation of such approaches and their impact on improving quality attributes of software systems.

This volume, the second in the Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development series, presents 2 regular revised papers, a guest editors' introduction, and 6 papers in a special section that have been through a careful peer reviewing process by the journal's Editorial Board. Besides a wide range of topics from software design to implementation of aspect-oriented languages, the 6 papers of the special section concentrate on AOP systems, software and middleware.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

On Horizontal Specification Architectures and Their Aspect-Oriented Implementations

On Horizontal Specification Architectures and Their Aspect-Oriented Implementations
Abstract
In order to provide better alignment between conceptual requirements and aspect-oriented implementations, specification methods should enable the encapsulation of behavioral abstractions of systems. In this paper we argue that horizontal architectures, consisting of such behavioral abstractions, can provide better separation of concerns than conventional architectures, while supporting incremental development for more common units of modularity such as classes. We base our arguments on our experiences with the DisCo method, where behavioral abstractions are composed using the superposition principle, a technique closely associated with aspect orientation. Moreover, we demonstrate how the alignment between an abstract, horizontally architected specification (or model) and its aspect-oriented implementation can be achieved. Mappings are discussed that implement symmetric DisCo specifications both in Hyper/J, which enables symmetric separation of concerns, and in AspectJ that uses asymmetric structuring.
Timo Aaltonen, Mika Katara, Reino Kurki-Suonio, Tommi Mikkonen
A Framework for Policy Driven Auto-adaptive Systems Using Dynamic Framed Aspects
Abstract
This paper describes and evaluates a framework that allows adaptive behaviour to be applied to systems by using a combination of dynamic Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP), parameterisation and policies. Our approach allows the operator to create policies to define adaptive behaviour based on Event-Condition-Action rules. The combination of dynamic AOP with parameterisation aids reuse and allows aspects to be generated to suit the current system conditions; these aspects can then be woven at run time to adapt the application behaviour. This approach is evaluated in two ways; firstly performance measurements are presented to show that such behaviour does not add a substantial overhead to the target system. Secondly, Aspect-Oriented software metrics are applied to the adaptations applied to illustrate their reusability and flexibility.
Phil Greenwood, Lynne Blair

Focus: AOP Systems, Software and Middleware

Editorial: AOP Systems, Software and Middleware
Abstract
Aspect-oriented software development (AOSD) has grown into a well-established field within the software engineering community. AOSD is mainly concerned with developing and applying modularization techniques for the management of crosscutting concerns in large-scale applications. Though AOSD and, in particular, techniques for aspect-oriented programming (AOP) have been regularly introduced at the application level, their usefulness at the middleware and systems programming level is rapidly proving essential.
Yvonne Coady, Hans-Arno Jacobsen, Mario Südholt
Aspect-Oriented Development of Crosscutting Features in Distributed, Heterogeneous Systems
Abstract
Some “non-” or “extra-functional” features, such as reliability, security, and tracing, defy modularization mechanisms in programming languages. This makes such features hard to design, implement, and maintain. Implementing such features within a single platform, using a single language, is hard enough. With distributed, heterogeneous systems, these features induce complex implementations which crosscut different languages, OSs, and hardware platforms, while still needing to share data and events. Worse still, the precise requirements for such features are often locality-dependent and discovered late (e.g., security policies). This paper describes an interface description language, Dado, to help program crosscutting features in CORBA based middleware software through an aspect-oriented programming. A Dado specification comprises pairs of adaptlets which are explicitly modeled in an extended version of CORBA IDL. Dado supports flexible and type-checked interactions (using generated stubs and skeletons) between adaptlets and between objects and adaptlets. Dado also supports co-ordinated, run-time binding of adaptlet-based features to applications in a distributed setting.
Eric Wohlstadter, Premkumar Devanbu
Shakeins: Nonintrusive Aspects for Middleware Frameworks
Abstract
Shakeins are a novel programming construct which, like mixins and generic classes, generates new classes from existing ones in a universal, uniform, and automatic manner: From a given class, a shakein generates a new class which has the same type as the original, but with different data and code implementation. We argue that shakeins are restricted, yet less chaotic, aspects. We further claim that shakeins are well suited for the introduction of aspect-oriented programming (AOP) into existing middleware applications. We introduce the AspectJ2EE language which, with the help of shakeins and a new deploy-time weaving mechanism, brings the blessings of AOP to the J2EE framework. A unique advantage of AspectJ2EE, which is less general (and hence less complicated) than AspectJ, is that it can be smoothly integrated into J2EE implementations without breaking their architecture.
Tal Cohen, Joseph (Yossi) Gil
Run-Time and Atomic Weaving of Distributed Aspects
Abstract
Run-time weaving of distributed aspects, if performed without any support for atomicity, endangers the global behavioral integrity of the application. Existing aspect-oriented middleware supports run-time weaving of distributed aspects, without addressing this problem. This inherently limits the type of behavioral changes that can be performed at run time. This paper presents a model and an architecture for middleware, named Lasagne, that supports run-time weaving of distributed aspects in an atomic way. The paper makes the case that run-time weaving of distributed aspects is well suited for supporting dynamic and behavioral adaptations that are cross-component, cross-node or cross-layer. Adding support for atomic weaving ensures that such system-wide adaptations are performed in a safe and coordinated way.
Eddy Truyen, Wouter Joosen
TOSKANA: A Toolkit for Operating System Kernel Aspects
Abstract
The development process for operating system kernels in Unix-like systems is becoming increasingly complex. The simple, easily understandable kernels of the 1970s have evolved into giant software systems consisting of hundreds of modules implemented in millions of lines of code, resulting in greatly increased resource and time overhead for bug fixes as well as functional improvements. Many code modifications and additions in kernel code are crosscutting, since they exhibit cross-module or cross-layer functionality, thus an aspect-oriented programming (AOP) approach is well suited for solving these problems. Operating system code implicitly involves dynamic behavior due to various threads in kernel mode that run in different process or hardware contexts. Methods to solve the crosscutting problems have to be able to adapt dynamically to this changing environment; as a result, dynamic AOP inside the kernel is required to implement required functionality.
This paper analyzes the feasibility of using dynamic AOP in kernel code. Using the TOSKANA system, it is shown that implementing dynamic AOP features is not only possible in operating system kernels, but also realizable with a justifiable overhead. First, the cross-module and cross-layer properties inherent in kernel code are presented, with special consideration of crosscutting concerns in procedural C kernel code. Then, TOSKANA—our toolkit for deploying dynamic aspects into an operating system kernel—is introduced. TOSKANA provides before, after and around advice for in-kernel functions and supports the specification of pointcuts as well as the implementation of aspects themselves as dynamically exchangeable kernel modules. The use of TOSKANA is demonstrated by several examples of cross-module as well as cross-layer problems and their solutions using dynamic AOP functionality inside the kernel. Performance results are presented to characterize the aspect deployment overhead incurred by using TOSKANA.
Michael Engel, Bernd Freisleben
Lean and Efficient System Software Product Lines: Where Aspects Beat Objects
Abstract
Software development in the domain of embedded and deeply embedded systems is dominated by cost pressure and extremely limited hardware resources. As a result, modern concepts for separation of concerns and software reuse are widely ignored, as developers worry about the thereby induced memory and performance overhead. Especially object-oriented programming (OOP) is still little in demand. For the development of highly configurable fine-grained system software product lines, however, separation of concerns (SoC) is a crucial property. As the overhead of object-orientation is not acceptable in this domain, we propose aspect-oriented programming (AOP) as an alternative. Compared to OOP, AOP makes it possible to reach similar or even better separation of concerns with significantly smaller memory footprints. In a case study for an embedded system product line the memory costs for SoC could be reduced from 148–236% to 2–10% by using AOP instead of OOP.
Daniel Lohmann, Olaf Spinczyk, Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat
Providing Configurable QoS Management in Real-Time Systems with QoS Aspect Packages
Abstract
Current quality of service (QoS) management approaches in real-time systems lack support for configurability and reusability as they cannot be configured for a target application or reused across many applications. In this paper we present the concept of a QoS aspect package that enables developing configurable QoS management for real-time systems. A QoS aspect package represents both the specification and the implementation of a set of aspects and components that provide a number of QoS policies. A QoS aspect package enables upgrades of already existing systems to support QoS performance assurance by adding aspects and components from the package. Furthermore, a family of real-time systems can easily be developed by adding aspects from the QoS aspect package into an existing system configuration. We illustrate the way a family of real-time database systems is developed using the QoS aspect package with a case study of an embedded real-time database system, called COMET. Our experiments with the COMET database have shown that it is indeed possible to design a real-time system without QoS management and then with a reasonable effort add the QoS dimension to the system using a QoS aspect package.
Aleksandra Tešanović, Mehdi Amirijoo, Jörgen Hansson
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development II
Editors
Awais Rashid
Mehmet Aksit
Copyright Year
2006
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Electronic ISBN
978-3-540-48891-0
Print ISBN
978-3-540-48890-3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/11922827

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