Abstract
Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) promises improved modularity in software design. However, it also presents novel mechanisms and departs from traditional design theory, leaving researchers in need of a theory and developers in need of guidance as to its appropriate use. This paper rests on the idea that the nature and expressive power of AOP lie largely in programming-language-provided implicit invocation (II) mechanisms, with join points as events, pointcuts as event patterns, advice as methods invoked by events, and aspects as classes that also create event-method bindings. The contribution of this paper is the idea that exposing the II roots of AOP can expedite development of a theory and practice of AOP. We present a formal reduction from AOP to II, then, as a data point, we show that model checking techniques previously developed for II systems can be used to check formal properties of AOP systems automatically.