A theory of aspects

Abstract

This paper define the semantics of MinAML, an idealized aspect-oriented programming language, by giving a typedirected translation from its user-friendly external language to its compact, well-defined core language. We argue that our framework is an effective way to give semantics to aspectoriented programming languages in general because the translation eliminates shallow syntactic differences between related constructs and permits definition of a clean, easy-tounderstand, and easy-to-reason-about core language.The core language extends the simply-typed lambda calculus with two central new abstractions: explicitly labeled program points and first-class advice. The labels serve both to trigger advice and to mark continuations that the advice may return to. These constructs are defined orthogonally to the other features of the language and we show that our abstractions can be used in both functional and object-oriented contexts. The labels are well-scoped and the language as a whole is well-typed. Consequently, programmers can use lexical scoping in the standard way to prevent aspects from interfering with local program invariants.

Chemical foundations of distributed aspects

“…For instance, in AspectJ [31] join points are method invocations, field accesses, etc. In functional aspect-oriented programming languages, join points are typically function applications [18,61]. The central computational step of any chemical language is the application of a reaction rule, here specified by Rule Red.…”

Open Modules: Modular Reasoning About Advice

“…Walker et al propose a much simpler formal model incorporating just the lambda calculus, advice, and labeled hooks that describe where advice may apply [19]. As a foundational calculus, their model is ideal for studying compilation strategies for AOP languages.…”

“…Walker et al model around advice using a lower-level exception construct, and so their soundness theorem includes the possibility that the program will terminate with an uncaught exception [19].…”

“…The most closely related formal models are the foundational calculus of Walker et al [19], and the model of AspectJ by Jagadeesan et al [10], both of which were discussed in the beginning of Section 3. In other work on formal systems for aspect-oriented programming, Lämmel provides a big-step semantics for method-call interception in object-oriented languages…”

Aspect-Oriented Programming in Higher-Order and Linear Logic

“…However, much work already exist on the paradigm, including several formal specifications [2,15,16]. Logic programming has also been used [14] as a meta-programming device for AOP, generating code for conventional target languages (Java).…”