An Object Model for General-Purpose Aspect Languages

Aspect-Oriented Programming on the one hand supports a separate treatment of different concerns in software development. On the other hand it provides "weaving" technologies for knitting together such individual concerns in software systems. Since the aspect-oriented approach is an extension of the classical OO-paradigm it requires an enhancement of well-known language constructs on the meta level. Although some general-purpose aspect languages (GPAL) are available in the meantime, no commonly accepted object model has yet been proposed. Consequently a common terminology is still not available what substantially hinders the spread of good and useful concepts. This paper proposes an object model, which represents the foundation of the GPAL Sally. We compare our model in respect to AspectJ which is by far the most popular and well-established aspect language and, therefore used by a wide community.