There are no Aspects

In this paper, we claim that a specialized aspect module is not required. Instead, we propose an expressive aspect-oriented composition mechanism which can be applied upon existing modules. At the design level, the CoCompose modeling framework is introduced which is based on Model Driven Development. CoCompose allows step-wise refinement from a high-level design to the lowest level design or code level. Using these refinements, CoCompose postpones the decision concerning the modularization construct that is chosen for a particular concern. At the lowest level design however, a specialized aspect modularization construct still needs to be chosen because current aspect-oriented technologies typically introduce an aspect module. For resolving this issue, the FuseJ programming language is proposed that allows implementing all possible concerns as regular components. FuseJ introduces an expressive component composition mechanism that supports both regular and aspect-oriented compositions between components. As such, a seamless transition from design to implementation is achieved because no specialized aspect modules exist both at the design and implementation level.