Attribute-Oriented Programming

Attribute-oriented programming (@OP) is a program-level marking technique. Programmers can mark program elements (e.g. classes and methods) to indicate that they maintain application-specific or domain-specific semantics. For example, some programmers may define a "logging" attribute and associate it with a method to indicate the method should implement a logging function, while other programmers may define a "web service" attribute and associate it with a class to indicate the class should be implemented as a web service. Attributes separate application's core logic (or business logic) from application-specific or domain-specific semantics (e.g. logging and web service functions). By hiding the implementation details of those semantics from program code, attributes increase the level of programming abstraction and reduce programming complexity, resulting in simpler and more readable programs. The program elements associated with attributes are transformed to more detailed programs by a supporting tool (e.g. preprocessor). For example, a preprocessor may insert a logging program into the methods associated with a "logging" attribute.

Attribute-Oriented Programming in Various Languages

Java

With the inclusion of The Metadata Facility for the Java Programming Language (JSR-175) into the J2SE 5.0 release it's possible to utilize attribute-oriented programming right out of the box.
XDoclet library makes it possible to use attribute-oriented programming approach in earlier versions of Java.

C#

C# language supports attributes from the very first release. However these attributes are used to give run-time information and are not used by a pre-processor (there isn't one in C#'s reference implementation).

UML

UML supports a kind of attributes named Stereotypes.

References

*

* cite web
last = Wada
first = Hiroshi
coauthors = Suzuki, Junichi
year = 2005
url = http://www.cs.umb.edu/~jxs/pub/models05.pdf
title = Modeling Turnpike Frontend System: a Model-Driven Development Framework Leveraging UML Metamodeling and Attribute-Oriented Programming
format = PDF | publisher = In Proc. of the 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MoDELS/UML 2005)
* cite web
last = Rouvoy
first = Romain
coauthors = Merle, Philippe
year = 2006
url = http://research.microsoft.com/~cszypers/events/WCOP2006/rouvoy-wcop-06.pdf
title = Leveraging Component-Oriented Programming with Attribute-Oriented Programming
format = PDF | publisher = In Proc. of the 11th ECOOP International Workshop on Component-Oriented Programming (WCOP 2006)

Tools

* [http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/apt/ Annotation Processing Tool (apt)]
* [http://spoon.gforge.inria.fr/Spoon/HomePage Spoon] , an Annotation-Driven Java Program Transformer
* [http://xdoclet.codehaus.org/ XDoclet] , a Javadoc-Driven Program Generator

External links

* Don Schwarz. [http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/06/30/insidebox1.html Peeking Inside the Box: Attribute-Oriented Programming with Java5] .
* Sun [http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=175 JSR 175] .
* [http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/excerpt/prog_csharp_ch18/index.html?page=1 Attributes and Reflection] - sample chapter from [http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progcsharp/index.html?CMP=ILL-4GV796923290 Programming C#] book.
* [http://dssg.cs.umb.edu/projects/mturnpike.html Modeling Turnpike Project] .
* [http://fractal.objectweb.org/fraclet Fraclet] : An annotation-based programming model for the [http://fractal.objectweb.org Fractal] component model.
* [http://madebits.com/aep/index.php Attribute Enabled Software Development] book