Relationship aspects

The relationships between objects in object-oriented programs are as important as the objects themselves. Unfortunately, most objectoriented programming languages provide little support for such relationships, leaving the task of implementing them entirely to the programmer. Relationships are typically hard-coded into the participating classes, resulting in tangled code that unnecessarily couples these classes together. The classes become harder to understand and cannot be reused independently. Aspect-oriented programs can model relationships explicitly, treating them as separate concerns that cross-cut their participants. We show how relationships can be implemented as a library of aspects in Aspect/J. Aspects keep relationships independent of their participants, making the resulting programs easier to read, write and reuse, and as efficient as handwritten code. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.3.3 [Programming Languages]: Language Constructs and Features; D.2.11 [Software Engin...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: AOSD
• Authors: David J. Pearce, James Noble
• Keywords: AOSD 2006, Keywords Relationships, Languages General Terms, Programming Languages, Software Engineering