An Aspect-Oriented Distribution Service

This project explores the possibility of providing distributed systems services through Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP). AOP is a relatively new movement in software engineering. It allows the separation of aspects of an application from the implementation of the functional system model. AspectJ, the most general-purpose AOP language currently available, is used to present several distribution services to the application programmer. The project meets the goal of separation of concerns. A sample application, a simple e-mail system, is used to demonstrate the application programmer's interface to the distribution services. In applying basic distribution, object caching, and consistency, the system was not modified from its basic implementation. In the larger picture, this project explores AspectJ as a general vehicle for providing general-purpose application services, such as distribution, concurrency control, and persistence. The current focus of AspectJ is separating concerns within the source code for a system. Several extensions to AspectJ relating to general-purpose aspects are proposed.