Attribute-Oriented Programming

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Programming paradigms

Agent-oriented Component-based Flow-based Pipeline Concatenative Concurrent computing Declarative (contrast: Imperative) Functional Dataflow Cell-oriented (spreadsheets) Reactive Goal-directed Constraint Constraint logic Logic Abductive logic Inductive logic Event-driven Feature-oriented Function-level (contrast: Value-level) Imperative (contrast: Declarative) Greater separation of concerns Aspect-oriented Subject-oriented Array (contrast: Scalar) Automata-based Object-oriented Class-based Prototype-based Procedural Structured Role-oriented Scalar (contrast: Array) Iterative (contrast: Recursive) Metaprogramming Attribute-oriented Automatic Generic Template Policy-based Language-oriented Grammar-oriented Dialecting Intentional Reflective Modular Nondeterministic Parallel computing Process-oriented Programming in the large and programming in the small Recursive (contrast: Iterative) Tree Value-level (contrast: Function-level) This box: view • talk • edit

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.

Contents 1 Attribute-oriented programming in various languages 1.1 Java 1.2 C# 1.3 UML 2 References 3 Tools 4 External links

[edit] Attribute-oriented programming in various languages

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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).

[edit] UML

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) supports a kind of attributes named Stereotypes.

[edit] References

[edit] Tools

• Annotation Processing Tool (apt)
• Spoon, an Annotation-Driven Java Program Transformer
• XDoclet, a Javadoc-Driven Program Generator

[edit] External links

• Don Schwarz. Peeking Inside the Box: Attribute-Oriented Programming with Java5.
• Sun JSR 175.
• Attributes and Reflection - sample chapter from Programming C# book.
• Modeling Turnpike Project.
• Fraclet: An annotation-based programming model for the Fractal component model.
• Attribute Enabled Software Development book

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