Open Collections

Abstract

Most aspect-oriented programming technology used today uses a linguistic approach that enables programmers to write modular crosscutting code. Two limitations of these approaches are that there is only one decomposition present for a code-base and that they require developers to adopt a new (or extended) programming language. We propose fluid AOP to modularize crosscutting concerns without these limitations. Fluid AOP provides mechanisms in the IDE for creating constructs that localize a software developer's interaction for a specific task. These constructs act as fluid aspects of the system. They are editable representations of the subset of the code-base that the developer needs to interact with to perform a task. We present three fluid AOP prototypes and provide comparisons between them; as well as comparisons between the fluid AOP, linguistic AOP, and non AOP approaches.