An advice for advice composition in AspectJ

Abstract

Aspect composition often involves advice interference and this is a crucial problem in aspect oriented programming. When multiple advices are woven at the same join point, the advices often interfere with each other. Giving appropriate precedence order is a typical solution of this problem but it cannot resolve all kinds of advice interference. To address this problem, we propose a novel language extension named Airia, which provides a new kind of around advice for resolving advice interference. This kind of advice named a resolver is invoked only at the join points when given advices conflict with each other. The resolvers can call an extended version of proceed, which takes as an argument precedence order among remaining advices. Furthermore, the resolvers are composable. They can be used to resolve interference among other resolvers and advices. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.