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Reflex — Towards an Open Reflective Extension of Java

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Book cover Metalevel Architectures and Separation of Crosscutting Concerns (Reflection 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2192))

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Abstract

Since version 1.1 of the Java Development Kit, the Java reflective facilities have been successively extended. However, they still prove to be limited. A number of systems (e.g. MetaXa, Guaraná, Kava, Javassist) have addressed this limitation by providing reflective extensions of Java with richer MetaObject Protocols (MOPs). All these extensions provide a particular, monolithic, infrastructure that reflects the commitment of the designer to particular trade-offs between efficiency, portability, expressiveness and flexibility. Unfortunately, these trade-offs are not satisfactory for all applications, since different applications may have different needs. This calls for breaking down the building of a reflective extension into different components that can be specialized in order to fit specific needs. We qualify such a reflective extension as open. In this paper, we present Reflex, a prototype open reflective extension of Java. Reflex can be seen both as a reflective extension of Java and as a first step towards a framework for building such extensions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. École des Mines de Nantes, La Chantrerie - 4, rue Alfred Kastler, B.P. 20722, F-44307, Nantes Cedex 3, France

    Noury M. N. Bouraqadi-Saâdani & Jacques Noyé

  2. Faculty of Physics and Mathematics Computer Science Department, University of Chile, Av. Blanco Encalada 2120, Casilla, 2777, Santiago, Chile

    Éric Tanter

Authors
  1. Éric Tanter
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  2. Noury M. N. Bouraqadi-Saâdani
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  3. Jacques Noyé
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Information Science and Technology Department of Computer Science, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Akinori Yonezawa

  2. Global Scientific Information and Computing Center Department of Mathematical and Computing Sciences, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Oo-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8552, Japan

    Satoshi Matsuoka

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Tanter, É., Bouraqadi-Saâdani, N.M.N., Noyé, J. (2001). Reflex — Towards an Open Reflective Extension of Java. In: Yonezawa, A., Matsuoka, S. (eds) Metalevel Architectures and Separation of Crosscutting Concerns. Reflection 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2192. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45429-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45429-2_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42618-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45429-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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