Aspect-oriented component composition in PacoSuite through invasive composition adapters

摘要

This work investigates the combination of aspect-oriented and component-based software development. For integrating aspects within component -based applications, we propose two main strategies: (1) integrating the behavior of aspects at the component composition level and (2) integrating the behavior of the aspects within the involved components themselves. We illustrate how the proposed strategies are incorporated in the PacoSuite component-based model, which introduces explicit and reusable protocol descriptions, called composition patterns. Aspects are integrated at the composition level by modularizing them as composition adapters. Composition adapters are visually applied onto a composition pattern and the changes they describe are automatically inserted. Invasive composition adapters are proposed to express aspects that require invasive changes to the internal behavior of the involved components. These changes are automatically inserted into the concerned components and composition patterns. For implementing the invasive adaptations of a composition adapter, we propose to employ aspect-oriented techniques. The proposed approach is implemented in a visual component composition environment and validated by presenting a small e-commerce case-study where three crosscutting concerns are successfully modularized as composition adapters.