[aspectj-users] Metadata as projections onto multidimensional space

[Ramnivas Laddad <ramnivas@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

(Triggered by recent discussion on XDoclet/AspectJ integration)

Could method names and metadata be viewed as projections 
for the same entity in different dimensions of a 
multidimensional characteristics space? Each operation 
is then a point in such a space.

With this way of viewing the metadata, the tags define the 
dimensions (security, atomicity) with the "core" being the 
implict tag associated with the operations name. An operation's 
name is a then projection onto the core dimension, whereas, 
each metadata is projection onto the corresponding dimension.


                   atomicity
                      ^
                      |         
                      |       x        
                      |         
                      |  ("debit", "required", "authorization")
                      |
                      |
                      +-------------> core
                     /
                    /
                   /
                  /
                 /
                v
           security

A nice thing about this view is each dimension is (by definition)
orthogonal, so it wouldn't be possible to deduce one characteristics
from another. There is no way to tell the security implication of
debit() and credit() method by examining just the (core) name.

-Ramnivas

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