Adding distribution to existing applications by means of aspect-oriented programming

Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) is a new program-ming paradigm that offers a novel modularization unit for the crosscutting concerns. Functionalities originally spread across several modules and tangled with each other can be factored out into a single, separate unit, called an aspect. The source code fragments introduced to port an exist-ing application to a distributed environment (such as Java RMI) are typically scattered and tangled, thus representing an ideal candidate for the usage of aspects. In this paper, we propose a distribution framework based on AOP and we describe the steps necessary to migrate an existing program to it. In our solution, the original application remains obliv-ious of the distribution concern and all required aspects are generated automatically. The approach was validated on a case study.