Supporting dynamic crosscutting with partial behavioral reflection: a case study

The relationship between reflection and aspect-oriented programming is still under exploration. This paper reports on an experiment to support a widely-accepted, general-purpose aspect language mechanism - AspectJ´s dynamic crosscutting -, with a model of partial behavioral reflection. We present a first approach to such a mapping, identify some extensions that can improve the effectiveness of the mapping, and validate our proposal through a revisited mapping. These extensions have been integrated into our Java reflective platform, Reflex.