Join point patterns: A high-level join point selection mechanism

Abstract

Aspect-Oriented Programming is a powerful technique to better modularize object-oriented programs by introducing crosscutting concerns in a safe and noninvasive way. Unfortunately, most of the current join point models are too coupled with the application code. This fact hinders the concerns separability and reusability since each aspect is strictly tailored on the base application. This work proposes a possible solution to this problem based on modeling the join points selection mechanism at a higher level of abstraction. In our view, the aspect designer does not need to know the inner details of the application such as a specific implementation or the used name conventions rather he exclusively needs to know the application behavior to apply his/her aspects. In the paper, we present a novel join point model with a join point selection mechanism based on a high-level program representation. This high-level view of the application decouples the aspects definition from the base program structure and syntax. The separation between aspects and base program will render the aspects more reusable and independent of the manipulated application. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.