XAJ: An Extensible Aspect­Oriented Language

This work presents the language XAJ (eXtensible AspectJ), giving a formal syntax definition and implementation details. The main purpose of the language is to increase the modularity and portability of extension definitions for the aspect­oriented language AspectJ. XAJ is itself an extension of AspectJ, introducing the concept of syntax classes, units that extend classes with syntax definitions. Syntax classes also define the semantics of extensions and serve as a representation for nodes of abstract syntax trees. The language can be used as a tool to create domain­specific extensions to AspectJ, and domain­specific aspect­oriented languages embedded into AspectJ.