Topics for Exam 2 in Com S 541

This exam covers topics from homeworks 3-4, including AspectJ and your
design of Aspect Smalltalk.

REMINDERS

The exam will be open book, open notes.  (Warning: don't expect to
learn the material during the exam, you won't have time!  A good idea
for studying is to condense your notes to a few pages of ready
reference materials.) 

If you need more space, use the back of a page.  Note when you do that
on the front.

This exam is timed.  We will not grade your exam if you try to take
more than the time allowed.  Therefore, before you begin, please take
a moment to look over the entire exam so that you can budget your
time.

Clarity is important; if your diagrams or programs are sloppy and hard
to read, you will lose points.  Correct syntax also makes a difference
for programming questions.

READINGS

Primarily, you should read The AspectJ(TM) Programming Guide
(http://aspectj.org/doc/dist/progguide/index.html); Gregor Kiczales,
Erik Hilsdale, Jim Hugunin, Mik Kersten, Jeffrey Palm, and William
G. Griswold, "An Overview of AspectJ," In J. Lindskov Knudsen (ed.),
ECOOP 2001 --- Object-Oriented Programming 15th European Conference,
Budapest Hungary, pages 327-353, Volume 2072 of Lecture Notes in
Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, June, 1997
(http://aspectj.org/documentation/papersAndSlides/ECOOP2001-Overview.pdf);
Gregor Kiczales, Erik Hilsdale, Jim Hugunin, Mik Kersten, Jeffrey
Palm, and William G. Griswold, Getting started with AspectJ,
Communications of the ACM, Vol 44, num 10, pp. 59-65, Oct. 2001
(http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/383845.383858).

If you have time, see the course web site and also the course syllabus
for other readings.

TOPICS

In the following, I use + to denote relatively more important topics,
and - to denote relatively less important topics. Topics marked with
++ are almost certain to be on the exam.  All of these are fair game,
but if you have limited time, concentrate on the ones that are more
important first (and in those, the ones you are most uncertain about).

SKILLS

  + AspectJ programming; be able to:

        + give output of AspectJ code, especially for code that uses
	  pointcuts and advice
	++ write aspects that advise existing Java code,
          for example, to write development aspects [HW3: FibTracing,
	  BlankLines, FibTiming], or production aspects [HW3: FibMemo]
        + write aspects that introduce declarations into existing Java
	  code [HW3: problem 7]

TERMS AND CONCEPTS

You should be able to explain and use (in problems or essays)
the following concepts (with appropriate comparisons to related concepts).
You should be able to give examples of these concepts.

    + AOP design and general concepts:
        - How does AOP differ from the use of reflection?
	+ How does AOP relate to OOP?
	- What uses are typical for AOP?
	+ What is a cross-cutting concern?  Give an example
	+ What is tangling? Give an example.
        - Why don't OOP design patterns solve the problems that AOP
          tries to solve well?
        + Describe the semantics of AspectJ features.
	+ What is a join point?  A pointcut? Advice?
        + Describe the kinds of changes aspects in AspectJ can make
          to a program [HW4, problem 1]
	+ Describe the meaning of different kinds of advice.
	+ Describe the meaning of the different patterns in AspectJ.
	+ Explain how context exposure works in AspectJ.
        + Describe the advantages of a programming language approach, such as
          AspectJ, as opposed to approaches outside of a language,
          such as edting scripts. [HW4, problem 2]
        + Describe the advantages or utility of various features 
          AspectJ [HW4, problem 3]
        + Describe type checking in AspectJ and its problems,
	  e.g., for around advice [HW4, problem 4]
        + How can one use AspectJ to enforce programming rules, such
          as layering of software?
        + How can one use AspectJ to change how exceptions are
          propagated or handled?
	+ How can one use AspectJ to help glue independently developed
          libraries of code together? 

    + Aspect Smalltalk
        + Describe your design for Aspect Smalltalk, for example in
          some feature, by giving the grammar of that feature, its
          semantics, and some examples [HW4, problem 5]
        + Consider some feature like one in AspectJ, and explain how
          it could be incorporated into an Aspect-oriented version of
          Smalltalk [HW4, problem 5]