Better Separation of Crosscutting Concerns with Aspectual Components

1
Better Separation of Crosscutting Concerns
withAspectual Components

• Karl Lieberherr
• College of Computer Science
• Demeter Team
• Northeastern University, Boston
• www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter

2
Team

• with Professors Felleisen, Lorenz, Wand
• Ph.D. students
• Doug Orleans,
• Johan Ovlinger
• Therapon Skotiniotis
• Pengcheng Wu

3
Overview

• Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) Crosscutting
  concerns, controlling tangling and scattering.
• Example Collect entities.
• Aspectual Components DJ
• Comparison to AspectJ
• Summary

4
Message

• AOP is useful and has a long history at NU
• Aspectual components, an AOP mechanism, are
  useful
• Adaptive Programming mechanisms must be used to
  properly express traversal-related aspects

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The MIT Technology Review (Jan./Feb. 2001 issue)

• Ten emerging technologies that will change the
  world
• Untangling Code - Aspect-Oriented Programming
  (AOP)
• Data Mining
• Micro Fluids
• Robot Design
• ...

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Northeastern Connection

• Crista Lopes wrote the first Ph.D. Thesis on AOP
  at Northeastern supported by Xerox PARC. Gregor
  Kiczales co-advisor.
• The Demeter Research Group worked with
  interesting AOP Systems long before the name AOP
  was invented.

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Quote MIT Technology Magazine

• The idea of aspects has been around for many
  years and with many different names. It is called
  adaptive programming at Northeastern University,
  and subject-oriented programming at IBM,

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AOP not every concern fits into a component
crosscutting
Goal find new component structures that
encapsulate rich concerns
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AOP

• Crosscutting concerns
• Example Logging record every operation an
  application performs
• When adding a new operation to this application,
  always put a trace statement in
• Keeping track of crosscutting concerns is
  error-prone

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AOP

• Crosscutting concerns, when implemented in an
  ad-hoc way, lead to a lot of tangling and
  scattering in the program.
• Goal of AOP is to control the tangling and
  scattering in the program.

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Tangling count color changes
ordinary program
better program
structure-shy functionality
Component 1
structure
Component 2
synchronization
Component 3
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Scattering count number of components to which
color goes
ordinary program
better program
structure-shy functionality
CM1
Concern 1
structure
CM2
Concern 2
CM3
synchronization
Concern 3
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Aspect-Oriented ProgrammingExample

• Separating the following crosscutting concerns
• Object Structure concern (JAXB, optional package
  for Java 2 platform, XML schema UML class graph)
• Traversal-related concerns traverse a group of
  connected objects and execute code attached to
  nodes and edges of object graph (advice).
• separate traversals and advice
• Those two kinds of concerns appear frequently.

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Crosscutting in Equation System
overall graph object structure green graph
traversal purple advice
usedThings from EquationSystem through
Expression to Variable
equations
esEquationSystem
elsEquation_List
new HashSet
i1Ident
lhs
e1Equation
v1Variable
Object graph
rhs
elsExpression_List
c1Compound
i2Ident
v2Variable
a1Add
add
i3Ident
v3Variable
add
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What is a component?

• any identifiable slice of behaviour that delivers
  a meaningful service, involving in general
  several participants,
• used via well-defined interfaces,
• formulated for an ideal ontology
• can be deployed into a concrete ontology,
• is subject to composition by 3rd parties
  (black-box reuse)
• is subject to refinement by 3rd parties
  (white-box reuse)

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Aspectual Component
Class Graph
P1
P3
P2
Behavior Definition
P
P1
before / around
provided everything public

after
written to the CG similar to an OO
program is written to a concrete class graph

...
P3
enhancements before/around/after provided
...
before / around
after
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M1 Equation System
EquationSystem
equations
Equation_List
Ident

Variable
lhs
Equation
Numerical
rhs
Expression_List
Simple
args
Expression

op
Add
Compound
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Collect Things
definedThings
System

Thing

usedThings


Definition
Body
definedThings from System bypassing Body to
Thing usedThings from System through Body
to Thing from System
constraint to Thing
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M1 Equation System
definedThings from EquationSystem bypassing
Expression to Variable
EquationSystem
equations
Equation_List
Ident

lhs
Equation
Variable
Numerical
rhs
Simple
args
Expression_List
Expression
S
T

op
Add
Compound
D
B
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M1 Equation System
usedThings from EquationSystem through
Expression to Variable
EquationSystem
equations
Equation_List
Ident

lhs
Equation
Variable
Numerical
rhs
Simple
args
Expression_List
Expression
S
T

op
Add
Compound
D
B
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Aspectual Component

• component COLLECT
• participant Source
• expected static ClassGraph cg
• public HashSet collect(String constraint)
• String id from Target to
  edu.neu.ccs.demeter.Ident
• Visitor v new Visitor()
• HashSet return_val new HashSet()
• void before(Thing v1)
• return_val.add(cg.fetch(v1, id) )
• public Object getReturnValue()return
  return_val
• Source.cg.traverse(this,
• from Source constraint to Target,
  v
• participant Target

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Aspectual Component

• Find appropriate class graph and traversals for
  task at hand
• Simplify from graph with 11 nodes to graph with 4
  nodes to graph with two nodes.

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Adapter part

• // EquationSystem class graph
• attach COLLECT
• EquationSystem Source with
• provide EquationSystemcg to
• Sourcecg
• Variable Target

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Java code

• class System
• String id from Thing to edu.neu.ccs.demeter.I
  dent
• HashSet collect(ClassGraph cg, String
  constraint)
• Visitor v new Visitor()
• HashSet return_val new HashSet()
• void before(Thing v1)
• return_val.add(cg.fetch(v1, id) )
• public Object getReturnValue()return
  return_val
• cg.traverse(this,from Systemconstraintto
  Thing, v)
• return (HashSet)v.getReturnValue()
• HashSet defined(ClassGraph cg)
• return (HashSet) this.collect(cg, bypassing
  Body )
• HashSet used(ClassGraph cg)
• return (HashSet) this.collect(cg, through
  Body )

green traversal black bold structure purple
advice red parameters
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Ad-hoc Implementation oftraversal-related
concerns

• Leads to lots of tangled and scattered code with
  numerous disadvantages
• The question is not how to eliminate the tangling
  but how to reduce it
• AOP is about tangling control of the
  implementation of crosscutting concerns
• Crosscutting will always lead to some tangling at
  code level

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Need more than localizationof crosscutting
concerns

• If we localize a crosscutting traversal-related
  concern in the standard way, we get a method that
  violates the Law of Demeter
• In addition Use traversal strategies to
  eliminate accidental noise in class graph
• Need AP to improve AOP

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AspectJ (Xerox PARC)

• A general aspect-oriented programming language
  for Java.
• An aspect is like a class and may contain
  pointcut definitions defining a set of join
  points and advice saying what to do before, after
  or instead of the join points.

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DJ (Northeastern)

• Is a Java package that supports AOP for
  traversal-related concerns.
• Connection to AspectJ both can be used
  simultaneously.
• DJ provides an implementation of Adaptive
  Programming (AP).

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AspectJ (Xerox) DJ (NEU)

• Abstract pointcut
• set of execution points
• where to watch
• Advice
• what to do
• Concrete pointcut
• set notation using regular expressions

• Abstract object slice
• set of entry/exit points
• where to go
• Visitor
• what to do
• Actual object slice
• traversal strategies

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Concepts needed(DJ classes)

• ClassGraph
• Strategy ( Java String traversal strategy)
• Visitor

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Adaptive Programming
Strategy
Bold names refer to DJ classes.
is use-case based abstraction of
ClassGraph
defines family of
Object
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Adaptive Programming
Strategy
defines traversals of
Object
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Adaptive Programming
Strategy
guides and informs
Visitor
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AOP AP

• Program with aspects that correspond to the
  concerns of the programmer.

• Relieve the programmer from the details of some
  concern.
• Create robustness to changes in an aspect.
• AP is about join point reduction.
• Example structure-shyness

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Benefits of Adaptive Programming

• robustness to changes
• shorter programs
• design matches program,
• more understandable code
• partially automated evolution
• keep all benefits of OO technology
• improved productivity

Applicable to design and documentation of your
current systems.
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Summary

• AOP getting a lot of attention. Addresses an
  important problem how to program crosscutting
  concerns.
• AP is about relieving the programmer from the
  details of a concern traditionally from the
  structural concern.

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Summary

• We view components as slices of behavior
• Aspectual components
• reconcile between functional and object
  decomposition
• add new behavior and modify existing behavior
• are a good model for AOP