research-article

Modular aspect-oriented design with XPIs

Authors:

Kevin Sullivan,

William G. Griswold,

Macneil Shonle,

Nishit TewariAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Volume 20, Issue 2

Article No.: 5, Pages 1 - 42

https://doi.org/10.1145/1824760.1824762

Published: 08 September 2010 Publication History

Abstract

The emergence of aspect-oriented programming (AOP) languages has provided software designers with new mechanisms and strategies for decomposing programs into modules and composing modules into systems. What we do not yet fully understand is how best to use such mechanisms consistent with common modularization objectives such as the comprehensibility of programming code, its parallel development, dependability, and ease of change. The main contribution of this work is a new form of information-hiding interface for AOP that we call the crosscut programming interface, or XPI. XPIs abstract crosscutting behaviors and make these abstractions explicit. XPIs can be used, albeit with limited enforcement of interface rules, with existing AOP languages, such as AspectJ. To evaluate our notion of XPIs, we have applied our XPI-based design methodology to a medium-sized network overlay application called Hypercast. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of existing AO design methods and XPI-based design method shows that our approach produces improvements in program comprehensibility, in opportunities for parallel development, and in the ease when code can be developed and changed.

References

[1]

Aldrich, J. 2005. Open modules: Modular reasoning about advice. In Open Modules: Modular Reasoning About Advice. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3586, Springer, Berlin, 144--168.

Digital Library

[2]

Altman, R., Cyment, A., and Kicillof, N. 2005. On the need for Setpoints. In European Interactive Workshop on Aspects in Software. http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/. AspectJ project.

[3]

Baldwin, C. Y. and Clark, K. B. 2000. Design Rules: The Power of Modularity. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

[4]

Beck, K. 1999. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.

Digital Library

[5]

Bonér, J. 2004. What are the key issues for commercial AOP use: How does AspectWerkz address them&quest; In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD). 5--6.

Digital Library

[6]

Clifton, C., Leavens, G. T., and Noble, J. 2007. MAO: Ownership and effects for more effective reasoning about aspects. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP'07). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4609, Springer, Berlin, 451--475.

Digital Library

[7]

Clifton, C. and Leavens, G. T. 2003. Obliviousness, modular reasoning, and the behavioral subtyping analogy. In SPLAT: Software Engineering Properties of Languages for Aspect Technologies, L. Bergmans et al. Eds.

[8]

Clifton, C. and Leavens, G. T. 2002. Observers and assistants: A proposal for modular aspect-oriented reasoning. In Proceedings of the Foundations of Aspect-Oriented Languages Workshop (FOAL'02). 33--44.

[9]

Colyer, A. and Clement, A. 2004. Large-scale AOSD for middleware. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD'04). ACM Press, New York, 56--65.

Digital Library

[10]

Colyer, A., Clement, A., Harley, G., and Webster, M. 2005. Eclipse AspectJ: Aspect-Oriented Programming with AspectJ and the Eclipse AspectJ Development Tools. Pearson Education.

Digital Library

[11]

Colyer, A., Harrop, R., Johnson, R., Vasseur, A., Beuche, D., and Beust, C. 2006. Point: AOP will see widespread adoption/counterpoint: AOP has yet to prove its value. IEEE Softw. 23, 1, 72--75.

Digital Library

[12]

Dantas, D. S. and Walker, D. 2003. Aspects, information hiding and modularity. Tech. rep. TR-696-04, Princeton University.

[13]

Dantas, D. S. and Walker, D. 2006. Harmless advice. In Conference Record of the 33rd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages. ACM, New York, 383--396.

Digital Library

[14]

Douence, R., Fradet, P., and Südholt, M. 2004. Composition, reuse and interaction analysis of stateful aspects. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD'04). ACM Press, New York, 141--150.

Digital Library

[15]

Elrad, T., Filman, R. E., and Bader, A. 2001. Aspect-oriented programming. Comm. ACM 44, 10, 29--32.

Digital Library

[16]

Filman, R. E. and Friedman, D. P. 2005a. Aspect-oriented programming is quantification and obliviousness. In Aspect-Oriented Software Development, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. 21--35.

[17]

Filman, R. E. and Friedman, D. P. 2005b. Aspect-Oriented Programming is Quantification and Obliviousness. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 21--35.

[18]

Gamma, E., Helm, R., Vlissides, J., and Johnson, R. E. 1995. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.

Digital Library

[19]

Gradecki, J. D. and Lesiecki, N. 2003. Mastering AspectJ: Aspect-Oriented Programming in Java. Wiley, New York.

Digital Library

[20]

Griswold, W. G. 2001. Coping with crosscutting software changes using information transparency. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Metalevel Architectures and Separation of Crosscutting Concerns (Reflection'01). 250--265.

Digital Library

[21]

Griswold, W. G., Sullivan, K., Song, Y., Shonle, M., Tewari, N., Cai, Y., and Rajan, H. 2006. Modular software design with crosscutting interfaces. IEEE Softw. 23, 1, 51--60.

Digital Library

[22]

Guttag, J. V. and Horning, J. J. 1993. Larch: Languages and Tools for Formal Specification. Springer, Berlin.

Digital Library

[23]

Guttag, J. V., Horning, J. J., and Wing, J. M. 1985. The Larch family of specification languages. IEEE Softw. 2, 5, 24--36.

Digital Library

[24]

Hoffman, K. and Eugster, P. 2007. Bridging Java and AspectJ through explicit join points. In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Principles and Practice of Programming in Java (PPPJ'07). ACM, New York, 63--72.

Digital Library

[25]

HyperCast. HyperCast project. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~mngroup/hypercast/.

[26]

Jacobson, I. and Ng, P.-W. 2005. Aspect-Oriented Software Development with Use Cases. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.

Digital Library

[27]

Kellens, A., Mens, K., Brichau, J., and Gybels, K. 2006. Managing the evolution of aspect-oriented software with model-based pointcuts. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Object-oriented Programming. 501--525.

Digital Library

[28]

Kiczales, G., Hilsdale, E., Hugunin, J., Kersten, M., Palm, J., and Griswold, W. 2001a. Getting started with AspectJ. Comm. ACM 44, 10, 59--65.

Digital Library

[29]

Kiczales, G., Hilsdale, E., Hugunin, J., Kersten, M., Palm, J., and Griswold, W. G. 2001b. An overview of AspectJ. In Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP'01). 327--353.

Digital Library

[30]

Kiczales, G. and Mezini, M. 2005. Aspect-oriented programming and modular reasoning. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'05).

Digital Library

[31]

Kiselev, I. 2002. Aspect-Oriented Programming with AspectJ. Sams. Indianapolis, IN.

Digital Library

[32]

Krishnamurthi, S., Fisler, K., and Greenberg, M. 2004. Verifying aspect advice modularly. SIGSOFT Softw. Engin. Notes 29, 6, 137--146.

Digital Library

[33]

Larochelle, D., Scheidt, K., Sullivan, K., Wei, Y., Winstead, J., and Wood, A. 2003. Join point encapsulation. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Software-Engineering Properties of Languages for Aspect Technologies (SPLAT) at AOSD'03.

[34]

Laddad, R. 2003. AspectJ in Action: Practical Aspect-Oriented Programming. Manning.

Digital Library

[35]

Leavens, G.T., Baker, A.L., and Ruby, C. 2006. Preliminary design of JML: A behavioral interface specification language for Java. Preliminary design of JML. ACM SIGSOFT Softw. Engin. Notes 31, 3, 1--38.

Digital Library

[36]

Lesiecki, N. 2005. Applying AspectJ to J2EE application development. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD'05). ACM Press, New York.

[37]

Liebeherr, J. and Beam, T. K. 1999. Hypercast: A protocol for maintaining multicast group members in a logical hypercube topology. In Networked Group Communication, 72--89.

Digital Library

[38]

Liebeherr, J., Nahas, M., and Si, W. 2002. Application-layer multicasting with Delaunay triangulation overlays. EEE J. Select. Areas Comm. 20, 8.

Digital Library

[39]

Liebeherr, J., Wang, J., and Zhang, G. 2003. Programming overlay networks with overlay sockets. In Group Communications and Charges. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2816, Springer, Berlin, 242--253.

[40]

Lopes, C. V. and Bajracharya, S. K. 2005. An analysis of modularity in aspect oriented design. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD'05). ACM, New York, 15--26.

Digital Library

[41]

Meyer, B. 1988. Eiffel: A language and environment for software engineering. J. Syst. Softw. 8, 3, 199--246.

Digital Library

[42]

Meyer, B. 1992. Eiffel: The Language. Object-Oriented Series. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Digital Library

[43]

Morgan, C., Volder, K. D., and Wohlstadter, E. 2007. A static aspect language for checking design rules. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD). 63--72.

Digital Library

[44]

Ongkingco, N., Avgustinov, P., Tibble, J., Hendren, L., De Moor, O., and Sittampalam, G. 2006. Adding open modules to AspectJ. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development. 39--50.

Digital Library

[45]

Ostermann, K. 2008. Reasoning about aspects with common sense. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD'08). ACM, New York, 48--59.

Digital Library

[46]

Parnas, D. L. 1972. On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules. Comm. ACM 15, 12, 1053--1058.

Digital Library

[47]

Pawlak, R., Retaillé, J.-P., and Seinturier, L. 2005. Foundations of AOP for J2EE Development. Apress.

Digital Library

[48]

Rajan, H. and Leavens, G. T. 2008. Ptolemy: A language with quantified, typed events. In Proceedings of the 22nd European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP'08).

Digital Library

[49]

Rajan, H. and Sullivan, K. J. 2005. Classpects: Unifying aspect- and object-oriented language design. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'05). ACM Press, New York, 59--68.

Digital Library

[50]

Rashid, A. 2004. Aspect-Oriented Database Systems. Springer, Berlin.

Digital Library

[51]

Rho, T., Kneisl, G., and Appeltauer, M. 2006. Fine-grained generic aspects. In Proceedings of the Foundations of Object-Oriented Language Workshop (FOAL).

[52]

Rosenblum, D. S. 1995. A practical approach to programming with assertions. IEEE Trans. Softw. Engin. 21, 1,19--31.

Digital Library

[53]

Sabbah, D. 2004. Aspects: From promise to reality. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD). ACM, New York, 1--2.

Digital Library

[54]

Sakurai, K. and Masuhara, H. 2007. Test-based pointcuts: A robust pointcut mechanism based on unit test cases for software evolution. In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Linking Aspect Technology and Evolution. ACM, New York.

Digital Library

[55]

Steele, G. 1990. Common LISP: The Language 2nd Ed. Digital Press.

Digital Library

[56]

Steimann, F. 2006. The paradoxical success of aspect-oriented programming. In Proceedings of the OOPSLA Conference. ACM, New York, 481--497.

Digital Library

[57]

Steward, D. V. 1981. The design structure system: A method for managing the design of complex systems. IEEE Trans. Engin. Manage. 28, 71--74.

[58]

Sullivan, K. J., Griswold, W. G., Cai, Y., and Hallen, B. 2001. The structure and value of modularity in software design. In Proceedings of the 8th European Software Engineering Conference. (Held jointly with the 9th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering). ACM, New York, 99--108.

Digital Library

[59]

Sullivan, K. J., Griswold, W. G., Song, Y., Cai, Y., Shonle, M., Tewari, N., and Rajan, H. 2005. Information hiding interfaces for aspect-oriented design. ACM SIGSOFT Softw. Engin. Notes 30, 5, 166--175.

Digital Library

[60]

Tarr, P., Ossher, H., Harrison, W., and Sutton, S. M. 1999. N degrees of separation: Multi-dimensional separation of concerns. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering. 107--119.

Digital Library

[61]

Teitelman, W. 1966. Pilot: A step toward man-computer symbiosis. Ph.D. dissertation, AITR-221, MIT.

[62]

Thomas, D. 2005. Transitioning AOSD from research park to main street. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD'05). ACM, New York.

[63]

Tourwé, T., Brichau, J., and Gybels, K. 2003. On the existence of the AOSD-evolution paradox. In AOSD Workshop on Software-Engineering Properties of Languages for Aspect Technologies.

Cited By

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
El-Hokayem AFalcone YJaber M(2018)Modularizing behavioral and architectural crosscutting concerns in formal component-based systems – Application to the Behavior Interaction Priority frameworkJournal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming10.1016/j.jlamp.2018.05.00599(143-177)Online publication date: Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlamp.2018.05.005
Friesel DBuschhoff MSpinczyk OLawall J(2017)Annotations in Operating Systems with Custom AspectC++ AttributesProceedings of the 9th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3144555.3144561(36-42)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3144555.3144561
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Modular aspect-oriented design with XPIs
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software

Recommendations

Information hiding interfaces for aspect-oriented design

The growing popularity of aspect-oriented languages, such as AspectJ, and of corresponding design approaches, makes it important to learn how best to modularize programs in which aspect-oriented composition mechanisms are used. We contribute an approach ...
Modular aspect-oriented design rule enforcement with XPIDRs
FOAL '13: Proceedings of the 12th workshop on Foundations of aspect-oriented languages

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a popular technique for modularizing crosscutting concerns. However, constructs aimed at supporting crosscutting modularity may break class modularity. For example, to understand a method call may require a whole-...
A design rule language for aspect-oriented programming

HighlightsWe present a design rule specification language for aspect-oriented systems.We explore its benefits to supporting the modular development of classes and aspects.We discuss how our language improves crosscutting modularity without breaking ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology Volume 20, Issue 2

August 2010

139 pages

ISSN:1049-331X

EISSN:1557-7392

DOI:10.1145/1824760

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 08 September 2010

Accepted: 01 April 2009

Revised: 01 February 2009

Received: 01 June 2008

Published in TOSEM Volume 20, Issue 2

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Funding Sources

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

33
Total Citations
View Citations
1,103
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)5
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 22 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

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
El-Hokayem AFalcone YJaber M(2018)Modularizing behavioral and architectural crosscutting concerns in formal component-based systems – Application to the Behavior Interaction Priority frameworkJournal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming10.1016/j.jlamp.2018.05.00599(143-177)Online publication date: Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlamp.2018.05.005
Friesel DBuschhoff MSpinczyk OLawall J(2017)Annotations in Operating Systems with Custom AspectC++ AttributesProceedings of the 9th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3144555.3144561(36-42)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3144555.3144561
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
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3141848.3141853
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
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3125374.3125383
Malakuti S(2017)Modular composition of multiple applications with architectural event modulesSoftware—Practice & Experience10.1002/spe.247847:7(1013-1025)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/spe.2478
Browning T(2016)Design Structure Matrix Extensions and Innovations: A Survey and New OpportunitiesIEEE Transactions on Engineering Management10.1109/TEM.2015.249128363:1(27-52)Online publication date: Feb-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2015.2491283
Bagherzadeh MDyer RFernando RSánchez JRajan H(2016)Modular Reasoning in the Presence of Event SubtypingTransactions on Modularity and Composition I10.1007/978-3-319-46969-0_5(167-223)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46969-0_5
Bagherzadeh MDyer RFernando RSánchez JRajan HFrance RGhosh SLeavens G(2015)Modular reasoning in the presence of event subtypingProceedings of the 14th International Conference on Modularity10.1145/2724525.2724569(117-132)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2724525.2724569
Molderez TJanssens D(2015)Modular Reasoning in Aspect-Oriented Languages from a Substitution PerspectiveTransactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development XII10.1007/978-3-662-46734-3_1(3-59)Online publication date: 20-Mar-2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46734-3_1
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents