Communication History Patterns: Direct Implementations of Protocol Specifications

Date
2004-02-12
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Abstract
The interactions between separated crosscutting concerns and the base modularityof a system must be specified. These specifications include descriptions of the join points in the base code where behavior is to be added or replaced. At present, the means available for describing join points generally treat each join point in isolation, rather than allowing multiple join points to be related to each other. When the interactions to be specified consist of complex, stateful communication protocols, the protocols must be hand-compiled into a description of isolated join points. As a result, errors can be introduced into the implementation of the protocols, and the intent of each protocol can become obscured. <p>This paper describes the use of <i>communication history patterns</i> to interrelate multiple join points when implementing complex interaction protocols. A practical language for communication history patterns is described, involving the addition of constructs and preprocessing to AspectJ. A case study is discussed that compares the use of this extended language to both a Java implementation and an unextended AspectJ implementation.
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Computer Science
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