"Program, enhance thyself!": demand-driven pattern-oriented program enhancement

Program enhancement refers to adding new functionality to an existing program. We argue that repetitive program enhancement tasks can be expressed as patterns, and that the application of such enhancement patterns can be automated. This paper presents a novel approach to pattern-oriented automated enhancement of object-oriented programs. Our approach augments the capabilities of an aspect compiler to capture the programmer's intent to enhance a program. In response to the programmer referencing a piece of functionality that is non-existent, our approach automatically synthesizes aspect code to supply the required functionality transparently. To improve flexibility and facilitate reuse, the synthesis and application of the new functionality is guided by declarative whenthen rules, concisely expressed using a rule base. Our extensible automated program enhancement system, called DRIVEL1 , extends the AspectJ compiler with aspect generating capabilities. The generation is controlled...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: AOSD
• Authors: Eli Tilevich, Godmar Back
• Keywords: AOSD 2008, Pattern-oriented Automated Enhancement, Program Enhancement, Program Enhancement Tasks, Software Engineering