Re: Aspect Modelling and wide interfaces

Richard MacDonald wrote:
> Probably the answer is yes, but you're being quite vague so I can't say
> for sure :-)

Yes, somewhat deliberately so :-). I don't have time yet to engage in a full-scale defense of my thinking, so I'm just putting out feelers to find people with whom to correspond.

> Have you looked at COM?

Used it extensively. Certainly supports many of the required externals, but you have to jump through hoops sometimes. I'm trying to work out what type of programming language features you'd need to provide aspect isolation at the implementation level.

> Personally, I would look to AOP when dealing with "internal"
> implementation consolidations, such as logging, persistence, etc. I would
> not look to AOP when dealing with multiple "facets" that a client could see.

I think the AOP community are nearly all subscribing to this cop-out. The argument about "internal" features is a way of saying "we don't know how to isolate aspects of behaviour, so we'll disallow observable (external) behaviours for aspects". To my mind, AOP is nearly useless if if can't solve this fundamental problem.

I have a model for a language that can isolate aspects at the implementation level, but it requires a novel approach to lifecycle management and I'm not sure I have the right model for that yet.

--
Clifford Heath.