JAsCo: an aspect-oriented approach tailored for component based software development

TLDR: A new "aspect-enabled" component model, which contains build-in traps that enable to interfere with the normal execution of a component, is proposed that is backward-compatible with the Java Beans component model.

Abstract: In this paper we introduce a novel aspect oriented implementation language, called JAsCo. JAsCo is tailored for component based development and the Java Beans component model in particular. The JAsCo language introduces two concepts: aspect beans and connectors. An aspect bean describes behavior that interferes with the execution of a component by using a special kind of inner class, called a hook. The specification of a hook is context independent and therefore reusable. A connector on the other hand, is used for deploying one or more hooks within a specific context. To implement the JAsCo language, we propose a new "aspect-enabled' component model, which contains build-in traps that enable to interfere with the normal execution of a component. The JAsCo component model is backward-compatible with the Java Beans component model. Furthermore, the JAsCo component model allows very flexible aspect application, adaptation and removal at run-time. The necessary tool support for the JAsCo approach has been implemented. In addition, we present a performance assessment of our current implementation.