One of the main issues in contemporary AOP languages and frameworks is the expressiveness of the pointcut language. This paper proposes an extension mechanism for enriching pointcut languages with constructs that play the role of "new primitive pointcuts" and allow the creation of pointcuts with greater semantic value. Join point selectors are a generalization of the primitive pointcuts of current pointcut languages. Existing languages, however, do not allow users to create new join point selectors. We present a simple architecture for supporting user-defined join-point selectors as an extension mechanism implemented atop an existing AOP framework. We show examples of user-defined selectors that enhance the quality of pointcuts and make aspect development easier. Moreover, we show that our extension mechanism supports framework-specific selectors, which let aspects cross the boundary of a given framework while still respecting the modularity of that framework.
One of the main issues in modern aspect-oriented programming languages and frameworks is the expressiveness of the pointcut language or mechanism. The expressiveness of pointcut languages directly impacts pointcut quality, a property that can be decisive for the effectiveness of aspect implementations. In this work we propose join point selectors as a simple extension mechanism for enriching current pointcut languages with constructs that play the role of "new primitive pointcuts".Join point selectors allow the creation of pointcuts with greater semantic value. Although similar mechanisms can be found in some existing approaches, the underlying concept has not yet been clearly defined nor fully explored.We also present a simple architecture for adding join point selectors to an existing aspect-oriented framework, and show examples of usage of join point selectors to enhance the quality of pointcuts and make aspect development easier.
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