Aspect-Orientation and Database Systems: An Effective Customisation Approach.

The problem of providing database systems customised to the specific needs of an organisation or application is addressed. The authors demonstrate that such customisations are expensive in existing database systems owing to the crosscutting nature of customisable features, and they propose a customisation approach based on `aspect-oriented programming' techniques which allow separation of crosscutting features using special constructs known as `aspects'. Changes to the features encapsulated by aspects are localised, making cost-effective customisation possible (at compile-time and run-time) at both the DBMS level and the database level.