Detecting and resolving conflicts between adaptation aspects in multi-staged XML transformations

Abstract

Separation of Concerns (SoC) is a common principle to reduce the complexity of large software and hypermedia systems. Amongst a variety of approaches, adaptation aspects are a well-known solution to significantly improve SoC in adaptive hypermedia applications. To model adaptation aspects in XML-based hypermedia applications, we developed PX-Weave, a tool which allows to specify and weave such aspects in multi-staged XML transformation environments. However, while aspects increase modularity and thus decrease complexity of software, they do also introduce some complex problems. The most prominent one, aspect interaction, has received a lot of attention from researchers during the last decade. In this paper we investigate the problem of aspect interaction for adaptation aspects. We present a combined approach for static and dynamic detection of aspect interactions in multi-staged XML-based hypermedia applications, which we implemented as an add-on to PX-Weave.