Ownership and Effects for more Effective Reasoning about Aspects

Clifton, Curtis, Leavens, Gary T. and Noble, James (2006) Ownership and Effects for more Effective Reasoning about Aspects. Technical Report 06-35, Computer Science, Iowa State University.

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Abstract

Aspect-oriented languages like AspectJ increase the number of places in a program that need to be considered during reasoning. Advice can send messages to and write fields of any object, and can effectively override any method definition. Aspects can also interfere with other aspects. MAO is a variant of AspectJ that demonstrates how to make reasoning easier by allowing programmers, if they choose, to declare that their advice has limited control and heap effects. Heap effects, such as assignment to object fields are specified using "concern domains", which are declared heap partitions. We show, for example, how declaring what concern domains are read and written by methods and advice can be used to separate objects owned by the base program from those owned by aspects. Such concern domain annotations can also be used to check that advice cannot interfere with the base program or with other aspects. Besides allowing programmers to declare how concerns interact in a program, concern domains also support a simple kind of semantic pointcut. These features support more effective reasoning about control and heap effects.

Available Versions of This Paper

• Ownership and Effects for more Effective Reasoning about Aspects (deposited 21 December 2006) [Currently displayed]
  • MAO: Ownership and Effects for more Effective Reasoning about Aspects (deposited 27 April 2007)