aspect-oriented programming definition
<programming> (AOP) A style of programming that attempts to
abstract out features common to many parts of the code beyond
simple functional modules and thereby improve the quality of
software.
Mechanisms for defining and composing abstractions are
essential elements of programming languages. The design style
supported by the abstraction mechanisms of most current
languages is one of breaking a system down into parameterised
components that can be called upon to perform a function.
But many systems have properties that don't necessarily align
with the system's functional components, such as failure
handling, persistence, communication, replication,
coordination, memory management, or real-time constraints,
and tend to cut across groups of functional components.
While they can be thought about and analysed relatively
separately from the basic functionality, programming them
using current component-oriented languages tends to result
in these aspects being spread throughout the code. The
source code becomes a tangled mess of instructions for
different purposes.
This "tangling" phenomenon is at the heart of much needless
complexity in existing software systems. A number of
researchers have begun working on approaches to this problem
that allow programmers to express each of a system's aspects
of concern in a separate and natural form, and then
automatically combine those separate descriptions into a final
executable form. These approaches have been called
aspect-oriented programming.
Xerox AOP homepage.
AspectJ.
ECOOPP'99 AOP workshop.
(1999-11-21)
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