What is Aspect

This chapter focuses on designing software architectures of mobile applications using an Aspect-Oriented Architecture Description Language (AOADL). The AOADL follows an approach called Ambient-PRISMA which enables designers to address, in an explicit and abstract way, the notion of location and mobility. Concretely, the AOADL extends the PRISMA AOADL by introducing a primitive called an ambient which is inspired by Ambient Calculus. An ambient defines a bounded place where other architectural elements (components and connectors) reside and are coordinated with elements that are outside an ambient’s boundary. Architectural elements can enter and exit ambients. Ambients, as well as other architectural elements, are defined by importing aspects. Thus, behaviours that change the location of architectural elements are specified separately in distribution aspects. The objective of this chapter is to explain the steps that have to be followed when designing architecture configurations of distributed and mobile systems using the Ambient-PRISMA AOADL. This is explained by using a running example of a distributed auction system.