Aspect-oriented (AO) middleware is a promising technology for the realisation of dynamic reconfiguration in distributed systems. Similar to other dynamic reconfiguration approaches, AO-middleware based reconfiguration requires that the consistency of the system is maintained across reconfigurations. AO middleware based reconfiguration is an ongoing research topic and several consistency approac...

Aspect-oriented programming and in particular AspectJ as its predominant implementation has received an increasing amount of attention by the measurement community. Lately, new measures have been suggested that focus on aspect-oriented core concepts, including several measures for coupling in aspectoriented systems. However, these measures use different terminologies and lack a clear design goa...

A generic syntax-based approach is presented by which a fixed set of aspect-oriented features belonging to an aspect language family LA can be applied to a DSL. The approach centers on the construction of a grammar in which a predefined and fixed set of abstract join points and join point environments are linked with their concrete counterparts within the DSL. This connection enables the behavi...

In this paper we discuss an approach to the aspect-oriented refactoring of the Undo concern in an open-source Java system. A number of challenges and considerations of the proposed solution are analyzed for providing useful feedback about how the employed aspect language could better support the refactoring to aspects. We also consider the unpluggability property of a concern as an estimate of ...

Although one of the main promises of aspect-oriented (AO) programming techniques is to promote better software changeability than objectoriented (OO) techniques, there is no empirical evidence on their efficacy to prolong design stability in realistic development scenarios. For instance, no investigation has been performed on the effectiveness of AO decompositions to sustain overall system modu...

Aspect-oriented programs have received much attention from software testing researchers. Various testing techniques and approaches have been proposed to tackle issues and challenges when testing aspect-oriented programs including traditional mutation testing. In traditional mutation testing of aspect-oriented programs, mutants are generated by making small changes to the syntax of the aspect-or...

This SCP special collects articles that make contributions to the foundations of aspectoriented programming (AOP). Aspects have been developed over the last 10 years to facilitate the modularization of crosscutting concerns, i.e., concerns that crosscut with the primary modularization of a program. This special issue further continues the efforts of the annual FOAL workshop (Foundations of Aspe...

For some organizations, the proactive approach to product lines may be inadequate due to prohibitively high investment and risks. As an alternative, the extractive and the reactive approaches are incremental, offering moderate costs and risks, and therefore sometimes may be more appropriate. However, combining these two approaches demands a more detailed process at the implementation level. Thi...

Aspects use pointcut expressions to specify patterns that are matched against a base model, hence defining the base locations to which aspects are applied. The fragile pointcut problem is well-known in aspect-oriented modeling, as small changes in the base may lead to non-matching patterns. Consequently, aspects are not applied as desired. This is especially problematic for refactoring. Even th...

We propose to use a logic meta-system as a general framework for aspect-oriented programming. We illustrate our approach with the implementation of a simpli ed version of the cool aspect language for expressing synchronization of Java programs. Using this case as an example we illustrate the principle of aspect-oriented logic meta programming and how it is useful for implementing weavers on the...