A Domain-Specific Language for Coordinating Concurrent Aspects in Java
Résumé
Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) promises the modularisation of so-called cross-cutting functionality in large applications. Currently, almost all approaches to AOP provide means for the description of sequential aspects that are to be applied to a sequential base program. A recent approach, Concurrent Event-based AOP (CEAOP), has been introduced, which models the concurrent application of aspects to concurrent base programs. CEAOP uses Finite State Processes (FSP) and their representation as Labeled Transition Systems (LTS) for modeling aspects, base programs and their concurrent composition, thus enabling the use of the Labeled Transition System Analyzer (LTSA) for formal property verification. The initial work on CEAOP does not provide an implementation of its concepts, restricting the study of concurrent aspects to the study of a model. The contribution of this paper is the provision of an implementation of CEAOP as a small DSAL (Domain-Specific Aspect Language), Baton, which is very close to FSP, and can be compiled into Java. As an intermediate layer, we have developed a Java library which makes it possible to associate a Java implementation to a finite state process. The compilation process consists of translating both the Baton aspects and the Java base program into Java finite state processes. This translation relies on Metaborg/SDF to extend Java with Baton and Reflex to instrument the base program.