Aspect-orientation of control application code for distributed automation systems: The TORERO approach

Besides the programming of the control application code of a distributed automation system (DAS) and the functional allocation of the control application code to the specific devices that the DAS consists of, an important point is the implementation of communication related code to map to the underlying communication platform and to realise the collaboration of the distributed control application code. Due to the real-timeliness and even time-criticality of DAS applications, the correct handling of real-time constraints has to be considered. This paper presents an aspect-oriented approach for weaving the communication related code into the distributed control application code by means of AspectJ [AspJ03], an extension for aspect-oriented programming with Java, and gives a comparison to other approaches. In addition to the description of the weaving process and the presentation of a demonstrator example, considerations about the usability of this concept and some restrictions will be stated. This work is pan of the research project TORERO, which is funded by the European Commission under the IST program.