An Aspect-Oriented Middleware Architecture for Run-time and Atomic Weaving of Distributed Aspects

There is an increasing need for dynamic and context-sensitive adaptation of distributed applications in order to dynamically cope with evolving requirements of the usage context. To support dynamic and context-sensitive adaptation, we propose an aspect-oriente architecture that weaves and unweaves aspects at run-time on demand of the usage context. The goal of this report is to explore and solve the atomicity issues that appear when distributed aspects are woven at run-time. Run-time weaving of distributed aspects, if performed without any support for atomicity, may endanger the global behavioral integrity of the application. Existing aspect-oriented middlewares lack support for atomic weaving of distributed aspects. This lack stems from the absence of appropriate internode coordination protocols at the level of the underlying runtime support of these middlewares. The contribution of this report is the design and implementation of a middleware, named Lasagne, that supports runtime weaving of distributed aspects in an atomic way. As a result, Lasagne is very well suited for coordinating cross-node and crosslayer adaptations in a distributed system. We present a detailed overview of Lasagne’s run-time weaving model and the design of the Lasagne middleware. An Aspect-Oriented Middleware Architecture for Run-time and Atomic Weaving of Distributed