Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

This proposal builds on our preliminary work on AspectAda [1], a prototypical aspect-oriented extension to the Ada95/2005 programming language, and its corresponding plug-in for the GNAT programming system, a popular open source integrated development environment for the Ada programming language. In order to support reusability of aspect code, AspectAda adopts the notion of "programs = components + aspects + composition rules". This way, aspect definitions are decoupled from component code and maintain a high degree of reusability. In this project we plan to investigate the following three major issues: (1) Extend the level of reusability of aspect definitions, (2) Extend the level of granularity by which composition rules bind aspects to components (referred to as the joinpoint model in an aspect-oriented language), and (3) provide design-by-contract support for Ada. We believe that the area of aspect-oriented software development can benefit from this technology which combines real-time and aspect-oriented capabilities. Beneficiaries include highly qualified personnel through training which is to take place during this research as well as the industry. [1] Knut H. Pedersen and Constantinos Constantinides. AspectAda: Aspect-oriented programming for Ada95. Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the Ada Programming Language (SIGAda 2005), Atlanta, Georgia, USA, November 13-17, 2005.