Dean Wampler's Blog

I'm presenting a paper at AOSD 2007 called Aspect-Oriented Design Principles: Lessons from Object-Oriented Design (PDF on the AOSD 2007 Conference web site). AOSD won't succeed in the mainstream unless it can be used to build software with the essential characteristics expected of production code, e.g., agility, extensibility, maintainability, and of course, quality. It shouldn't be too surprising that principles of good OOSD apply to AOSD. Conversely, ignoring those principles is a recipe for failure. In fact, I argue that some of the early problems people have encountered with aspects and software "evolution" are really just cases of not applying these principles. In this paper, I review 11 Principles of Good Object-Oriented Design, cataloged by Robert Martin, and discuss how they apply to aspect-oriented design (AOD), how aspects help implement them (e.g., by making it easier to achieve separation of concerns), how aspects introduce nuances into the interpretations of these principles, and finally, extensions of these principles unique to aspects. My hope is that writers of aspects will be more successful if they apply these principles and that AOSD will prosper as a result. I should warn you that the paper is written in a somewhat academic style, but hopefully the practicality of the principles will be clear. I'd love to hear your feedback! As time permits, I'll try to blog about these principles here, in a less formal style ;) By the way, if you're really interested in AOSD, I hope to see you in Vancouver at the AOSD conference, March 12-16. I will be teaching a half-day tutorial on AOD. Please join me!