R.J. Stroud
Z. Wu
University of Newcastle upon Tyne. 1995.
Traditional approaches to the realisation of non-functional requirements such as dependability and distribution transparency are usually not transparent to application programmers and thus increase the complexity of the system. Using a different approach to implement a particular non-functional requirement involves application programmers in making changes to the system. Achieving a clean separation between the implementation of functional and non-functional requirements would reduce the complexity of the final system and thus enhance its maintainability and flexibility. In this paper, we present a metaobject protocol approach to satisfying non-functional requirements that uses meta level programming techniques to make a clean separation between functional and non-functional components, and thus makes it easier to revise the implementation of a particular non-functional requirement in order to meet new demands.