Modeling and Reasoning over Distributed Systems using Aspect-Oriented Graph Grammars

TL;DR

This paper introduces Aspect-Oriented Graph Grammars (AOGG) as a formal method to model and analyze distributed systems with global policies, leveraging graph transformation techniques to identify conflicts in aspect weaving.

Contribution

It extends graph grammar formalism with aspect-oriented concepts and demonstrates how to analyze aspect conflicts using the AGG tool in a distributed system case study.

Findings

AOGG effectively models distributed systems with global policies.

Graph analysis can identify potential conflicts in aspect weaving.

The case study illustrates practical application of AOGG and analysis techniques.

Abstract

Aspect-orientation is a relatively new paradigm that introduces abstractions to modularize the implementation of system-wide policies. It is based on a composition operation, called aspect weaving, that implicitly modifies a base system by performing related changes within the system modules. Aspect-oriented graph grammars (AOGG) extend the classic graph grammar formalism by defining aspects as sets of rule-based modifications over a base graph grammar. Despite the advantages of aspect-oriented concepts regarding modularity, the implicit nature of the aspect weaving operation may also introduce issues when reasoning about the system behavior. Since in AOGGs aspect weaving is characterized by means of rule-based rewriting, we can overcome these problems by using known analysis techniques from the graph transformation literature to study aspect composition. In this paper, we present a case study of a distributed client-server system with global policies, modeled as an aspect-oriented graph grammar, and discuss how to use the AGG tool to identify potential conflicts in aspect weaving.