On aspect-orientation in distributed real-time dependable systems

The design and implementation of distributed real-time dependable systems is often dominated by non-functional considerations like timeliness, object placement and fault tolerance. In this paper we illustrate how aspect-oriented programming can be used to address the non-functional aspects of such system separately from the functional requirements and what benefits results from this separation of concerns. Besides the theoretical reflection we also present a case study in which distribution, timeliness, and fault tolerance aspects are added to a simple logging component. The examples are implemented using the emerging AspectC++ language for aspect-oriented programming with C++. In the course of this paper we also evaluated how well the general-purpose aspect language AspectC++ is suited to address the aspects specific to this domain.