Dynamic adaptation of application aspects

  • Authors:

  • Francisco Ortin;Juan Manuel Cueva

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Oviedo. Calvo Sotelo s/n, Oviedo 33007, Spain;Department of Computer Science, University of Oviedo. Calvo Sotelo s/n, Oviedo 33007, Spain

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Systems and Software - Special issue: Computer systems
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

In today's fast changing environments, adaptability has become an important feature in modern computing systems, programming languages and software engineering methods. Different approaches and techniques are used to achieve the development of adaptable systems. Following the principle of separation of concerns, aspect-oriented programming (AOP) distinguishes application functional code from specific concerns that cut across the system, creating the final application by weaving the program's main code and its specific aspects. In many cases, dynamic application adaptation is needed, but few existing AOP tools offer it in a limited way. Moreover, these tools use a fixed programming language: aspects cannot be implemented regardless of its programming language.We identify reflection as a mechanism capable of overcoming the deficiencies previously mentioned. We have developed a nonrestrictive reflective technique that achieves a real computational-environment jump, making every application and language feature adaptable at runtime--without any previously defined restriction. Moreover, our reflective platform is independent of the language selected by the programmer. Using the reflective capabilities of the platform presented, an AOP framework that achieves dynamic aspect weaving in a language-independent way has been constructed, overcoming the common limitations of existing AOP tools.