Abstract

This position paper presents a UML notation for designing aspect-oriented applications. It is extracted from our experiences when building the JAC framework and from the concepts defined in the AspectJ language or in Aspectual Components. This notation is a proposal for a first step towards a high-level designing graphical language that can be used when building aspect-oriented applications. Moreover, it is also suited to design Aspect-Oriented applications in distributed environments. In short, it defines three main additional concepts to UML: groups (that provide classification means for heterogenous and distributed entities), pointcut relations (that allow the programmer to define crosscuts within the functional program), and aspect-classes (that actually implement the extension of the program on the crosscutting points denoted by the pointcut relations). In this paper, we give some concrete design examples of some aspects to illustrate how it can be used.

Citations