Hi Crista:

We have 2 AspectJ projects going in COM 3360!

Linda and I did the list below during the writing of the 
context object paper that you presented for us in San Francisco two years ago.

A context class modifies a group of classes in a similar way
as an aspect in AspectJ.

I noticed that Linda and I already had "advise" weaves and "new" weaves
but also many other kinds of weaves. See below.
Do you plan to add some of those other weaves also to AspectJ?

-- Karl


From:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter/biblio/context.html

This paper expresses collaborative change to behavior with a loose coupling
to the behavior which is changed. Linda Seiter's thesis topic (Design
Patterns for Managing Evolution). Shows that some Design Patterns are much
easier to use when the programming language supports the right abstractions.

This paper is in the line of work also recommended by Grady Booch that
patterns should be first class citizens that are an explicit part of the
architectural modeling language. See his ROAD article.

...

Context classes should have the following structure:

Context Class V {
        instance variables
        methods
        // several redefinitions:
        redefines C { // vertex based redefinition
          // additional instance variables
          D d; 
          // overwrite or add new methods for C-objects
          f(A) {};
          // incremental methods for C-objects
          before {};
          after {};
          around {};
          // incremental methods for edges from C-objects
          before l {}
          after l {}
          around l {}
            // includes also "derived" edges (methods)
          before x(A) {}
          after x(A) {}
          around x(A) {}
        }
        redefines -> X,y,Y { // edge based redefinition
          // additional instance variables for source of edges
          // overwrite or add new methods for source of edges
          f(A) {};
          // incremental methods for y-edge
          before {};
          after {};
          around {};
        }
}