Tackling pointcut fragility with dynamic annotations

Abstract

Within the aspect-oriented software development community, the use of annotation-based pointcuts has been proposed as a means to alleviate the fragile pointcut problem. Expressing pointcuts in terms of source-code annotations instead of the structure of the source code, decouples them from the source code of the base system and makes them more robust with respect to evolution. In this paper we demonstrate that, while annotations are suitable to capture static domain knowledge that can be leveraged by pointcut expressions, these annotations are ill-suited to capture dynamic domain knowledge. Consequently, pointcuts that rely on such dynamic knowledge still need to be defined in terms of actual source-code entities, thereby rendering them fragile again. As a means to alleviate this problem we propose Dynamic Annotations, an extension to Java annotations where the dynamic conditions under which the annotation is valid can be embedded in the annotation itself. By expressing pointcuts in terms of such dynamic annotations, these pointcuts are effectively decoupled from the structure of the base program, and become less fragile with respect to evolution. Keywords

AspectMatlab++: annotations, types, and aspects for scientists

“…Note, this is different from MATLAB, where our annotations do not annotate constructs, and instead designate important areas in code. Noguera et al [11], introduce the idea of dynamic annotations to AspectJ. These achieve a similar goal to what we have done with ASPECT-MATLAB annotations, though are presented in a very different context.…”

Source Code Annotations as Formal Languages

“…Source code annotations can be also dynamic as discussed by Noguera et al [9] and Cazzola et al [10]. Dynamic annotations can have properties that are evaluated dynamically when the annotations are processed (conventional static annotations are evaluated during compilation, just as constants).…”

“…Java version of the Configuration annotation type public @interface Configuration { public int paramId(); public string paramValue(); } Another interesting fact the reader might have noticed is that the annotation types can partially define abstract syntax. If one of the parameters accepted annotations 9 , then the annotation would be an instance of the Composite annotation idiom.…”

Towards an aspect-oriented language module

“…However, the use of stereotypes makes the pointcuts easier to understand and less dependent on concrete transition names, therefore reducing the impact of the fragile pointcut problem. This is based on Noguera et al [6], which uses Java annotations within AspectJ pointcuts.…”