Introduction - Autonomics Development: A Domain-Specific Aspect Language Approach - page 5

Callbacks. We do not currently provide support for callbacks where a server calls
back into a client or is a client to another server. This limits the class of
applications that our approach may be applied to and is an area for further
research.
1.4 Hypothesis Statement
We contend that the distribution and recovery concerns can be completely and effec-
tively modularised by defining them in a high-level domain-specific aspect language
which can be applied to existing applications using a compiler/generator tool.
We evaluate the above approach and show that a Distribution Definition
Language contributes to autonomic computing by simplifying the development of
distributed applications while allowing for greater reuse of application components.
1.5 Contribution
The contributions of this research include the following:
1. The concept of a Distribution Definition Language used to define classes and
associated methods to be made distributed, the distributed system to use to
make them distributed, and the recovery mechanism to use in the event of
an error.
2. A simplified approach to the development of distributed systems that al-
lows an existing application to be distributed, thereby improving software
reusability and simplifying testability of distributed applications, as applica-
tions may be functionally tested before having the distribution and recovery
concerns applied.
3. The ability to apply one of a number of protocols to the same code base
thereby generalising the distribution concern.
4. The ability to apply distribution awareness to applications in such a way that
the application is oblivious to the distribution implementation and recovery
mechanism, yet is able to fully participate in both.
In addition, these contributions, by alleviating some of the complexity in-
volved in distributed systems development and by allowing autonomic features,
such as recovery, to be transparently added to existing applications, provides a
contribution to autonomic computing.
1.6 Publications Overview
This topic is an extension of the author's Ph.D. thesis and the Distribution Def-
inition Language was first described in a paper presented at the Domain-Specific