Using aspects for integrating a middleware for dynamic adaptation

International audienceMiddlewares are designed to hide common concerns in software development. One of the challenges in middleware development is to conceive how they can be integrated into applications in an efficient manner and at an acceptable cost for developers. This article reports results of practical experiences of integrating Afpac, a middleware for dynamic adaptation, thanks to aspect-oriented programming. Using current techniques, places where applications and middlewares can interact are limited to boundaries of application entities. In the case of Afpac, this is not sufficient. This paper details the issues that arise when integrating Afpac and proposes a set of features an aspect weaver should have to be usable in that case. As usual weavers do not provide those features, a weaver has been developed in order to demonstrate the feasability of this approach