DAOP-ADL: An architecture description language for dynamic component and aspect-based development

Abstract

Architecture description languages deal with the description, analysis and reuse of software architectures. This paper describes DAOP-ADL, a component- and aspect-based language to specify the architecture of an application in terms of components, aspects and a set of plug-compatibility rules between them. With the aim of connecting the specification of the application architecture to the implementation, we describe our language using XML and XML Schemas. The DAOP-ADL language was designed to be interpreted by DAOP, our own dynamic component- and aspect-oriented platform. DAOP provides a composition mechanism that plugs aspects into components dynamically at runtime. The software architect will use the DAOP-ADL language at design time to describe the architecture of the application. Later this architectural information is loaded into the DAOP platform, which needs it to establish the dynamic connections between autonomous components and aspects. Therefore, the use of DAOP-ADL closes the gap between design and implementation of component- and aspect-based applications. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.