Re: [abc-users] Behaviour of release(..) method in relational aspects

> How does the release(..) method work? Does it look up a table of
> associations and revoke the specific association according to the vector
> of objects (if it exists)?

No. You should read the paper...

We generate a tracematch for each relational advice. This tracematch
*roughly* has this shape:

tracematch(X x, Y y) {
  sym after returning associate .... //binds x,y
  sym after returning release .... //binds x,y
  sym after returning action .... //binds x,y

  associate action { .. }
}

If you understood tracematches then you should see that quite
naturally, in the above tracematch a call to release will reset all
partial matches for this tracematch, because it is a "skip" symbol.
There's no special implementation of release. It's all done
automatically by the tracematch machinery. That's the beauty of the
approach.

> For example, I have the following code, where RA is some relational aspect:
>
> Object o1 = new Object();
> Object o2= new Object();
> RA.associate(o1, o2); //o1 and o2 are now associated through RA
> RA.release(o2, o1); // Compiles fine and no run time errors as well
>
> It is the RA.release(o2, o1) call that is of interest. This call
> obviously does not have any effect on the association between o1 and o2,
> but my question is why is it allowed to run freely on the main program?
> I would have thought an error or some sort of warning would be thrown,
> citing the non-existence of the association (o2, o1).

No, by design this is not the case. If you look at the above
tracematch definition, then you see that the release-call in your
example does not at all update the tracematch automaton state.
Therefore it would be very hard to give an error in such situations.
In fact you would need a second tracematch just for that, which is
hardly worth the price.

> I am just asking this out of curiosity.

I admit that this may not be straightforward to see. Are you going to
be at the AOSD conference this year? I will be giving a talk about
relational aspects there.

Eric

-- 
Eric Bodden
Sable Research Group
McGill University, Montréal, Canada