Composing aspects with aspects

Abstract

Aspect-oriented programming languages modularize crosscutting concerns by separating the concerns from a base program in aspects. What they do not modularize well is the code needed to manage interactions between the aspects themselves. Therefore aspects cannot always be composed with other aspects without requiring invasive modifications. This paper proposes a join point model that makes it possible to express aspect composition itself as an aspect, liberating the composed aspects from composition-specific code. We have implemented this new join point model in our Oarta language, an extension of AspectJ, and we show how to use it to write aspects that manage aspect interactions.