We’ve all heard that “component-oriented engineering” (CBD) has been moving into “service-oriented engineering” (SOA). But there is another contender in the ring, “aspect-oriented engineering.” (AOP) Here’s a quotable summary:

A software system is the realization of a set of concerns. One of the central premises of object-oriented programming is that each concern should be implemented as a separate module. However, there are certain system-wide concerns, such as logging, security, performance, and so forth, that often need to be addressed in many, if not all of the modules. Consequently, the code to handle these system-wide concerns may be mixed in with the core logic of a huge number of modules, resulting in lower productivity, poor quality, and systems that are hard to evolve.

Aspect-oriented programming overcomes these problems by modularizing the system-wide concerns.

To further elaborate on the Content Management application I was talking about yesterday, I thought that I would write up the details of what each web servlet (web page) will do and some of the administration details.

I am proposing whipping up a small content management program for building all or part of a web site based on templates. I figured that I would explain some of the goals and the requirements.

The following is just an initial brainstorm list of ideas that the engineering team would like to pitch for possible development over the next few months. The highest priority will be when Roger and Ann come up with actually jobs for us to do. In the meantime, however, we will start to work on our “AppComposer Bundles” because:

1. We will need to complete these in order to sell them next year.
2. Work done on these bundles will directly enhance our consulting abilities

The WebCab folks are really moving forward. Just check out this web page. Granted, i don’t think this page is quite live or promoted yet.

Greg Jorgensen sent out a link to this article entitled, U.S. economy alone (see “Why Software Is So Bad,” TR July/August 2002).

Even as software collapses under the weight of its own complexity, we’ve barely begun to exploit its potential to solve problems. The challenge is to find a way to write programs that both programmers and users can actually read and comprehend. [That is] to create programming tools that are so simple and powerful that the software nearly writes itself—in much the way that Excel automatically adds columns of numbers or Word automatically formats our documents. MORE...

The following are a couple of initial questions that we could ask to potential component suppliers. I am making the assumption that these questions are posed to application companies that might be interested in leveraging our existing AppComposer technology in order to sell build-to-order solutions, and not to companies like Diamelle who already have packaged component solutions.

In doing my research for last week’s Struts meeting, I read some stuff about tag libraries, a mechanism where someone can create components that are represented on a web page as new HTML-like tags. This idea, while not optimal, may be something that we’ll want to support.