Neil Loughran

Framed Aspects: Supporting Variability and Configurability for AOP

Aspect oriented programming (AOP) seeks to decompose concerns which crosscut system structure into more manageable modules. However, current AOP techniques alone lack the configuration mechanisms and generalisation capabilities that are required to realise variability (through clear reuse specifications). Conversely, frame technology provides extensive mechanisms for providing reuse and configuration yet cannot effectively modularise crosscutting concerns. This paper proposes ’framed aspects’ a technique and methodology which combines the respective strengths of AOP, frame technology and Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA). We argue that framed aspects can alleviate many of the problems the technologies have when used in isolation and also provide a framework for implementing fine-grained variability. The approach is demonstrated with the design and implementation of a generic caching component.

Language support for managing variability in architectural models

The effective management and composition of architectural variabilities has long been of importance to product line architects. Architects need to describe how conceptual variabilities are composed and realised through architectural decompositions of a product line. Architecture variabilities need to be described in terms of the chosen design decompositions, which do not often correspond naturally to feature model decompositions. Also, the fine-grained nature of certain architectural variabilities makes it difficult to represent them in a modular fashion, and describe how they are composed across different views. In order to address these issues, this paper presents a variability modelling language (VML), which supports first-class representation of heterogeneous forms of architectural variabilities. The language complements existing architectural modelling approaches for product lines by providing mechanisms to: (i) explicitly reference variation points in multiple architectural views, and (ii) support compositions involving both fine-grained and coarse-grained variabilities in an orthogonal fashion. The completeness and simplicity of VML is assessed through four case studies from different domains.

From requirements documents to feature models for aspect oriented product line implementation

Software product line engineering has emerged as an approach to developing software which targets a given domain. However, the processes involved in developing a software product line can be time consuming and error prone without adequate lifecycle tool support. In this paper we describe our approach, NAPLES, which uses natural language processing and aspect-oriented techniques to facilitate requirements analysis, commonality and variability analysis, concern identification to derive suitable feature oriented models for implementation.

Relational Database Support for Aspect-Oriented Programming

Code repositories play a central role in the reuse and mining of existing assets when engineering large, complex software systems. It is, therefore, essential that database support be extended to new programming paradigms as and when they emerge. This paper proposes an approach to support the storage, reuse and mining of aspects - constructs used in Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) to separate crosscutting concerns - in AspectJ (an aspect language for Java) using a relational database. The approach is based on mapping an aspects anatomy to the relational model hence allowing fine-grained queries to be composed. This results in greater flexibility during search and retrieval in contrast with most existing code repositories which store the code as BLObs complemented by meta-data about the code.