[aosd-discuss] Are Limitations in AspectJ 1.1 satisfied with 1.5?

[Eric Bodden]

> 
> 1) It doesn't provide a full support to access variables in the target
> program.
>     A pointcut can create a reference to all variables  in a joinpoint.
> Possible variables are: this, target. variables passed as parameters to
> the actual function in object and the returning value of the method. If
> we want catch other variables we must change the Source Code ( not
> available in black-box application ) and include this variables in that
> jointpoint

This has not changed in AspectJ, but is available via the "let" pointcut, which lets you bind expressions in the form of let(x,someExpr()) and is available in the "EAJ" extension to AspectJ (www.aspectbench.org).
 
> 2) If we want to access an object at runtime, we need to know the type
> of that object. So if we don't know the source code we can't access to
> that object. There is a manner to avoid this?

I don't understand that statement. Of course you can access objects which were created in code which you don't have the source code for. Maybe they are referring to the fact that ajc 1.1 used source code translation. So yes, that should be solved.

> This two issues make very difficult create an aspect that automatically
> profiling black-box applications

Many more subtle problems remain, however that's another topic.

Eric

--
Eric Bodden
Sable Research Group, McGill University
Montréal, Québec, Canada