Alice: Modularization of Middleware Using Aspect-Oriented Programming

In this paper, we identify three problems with current component middleware. First, the implementation of services is usually not modularized, making it hard to adapt the platform to application specific needs, to exchange services to cope with changing requirements or to use it on different devices. Second, mapping components to objects results in a complex programming model and is making the component code dependent on the used component framework. Third, application level crosscutting concerns are not modularized. To solve these problems, we propose an aspect-oriented programming approach, complemented by standard Java 1.5 annotations to provide meta information about the components, and a sophisticated query language for pointcut designation based on annotations.