The history of software development paradigms suggests that a new paradigm often
has its genesis in programming languages and then moves up to design and analysis
(e.g., structured programming preceded structured design and analysis, and objectoriented
programming predated object-oriented design and modeling). This same
pattern can also be observed with respect to aspect orientation.
This volume, the 8th in the Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development series, contains two regular submissions and a special section, consisting of five papers, on the industrial applications of aspect technology. The regular papers describe a framework for constructing aspect weavers, and patterns for reusable aspects. The special section begins with an invited contribution on how AspectJ is making its way from an exciting new hype topic to a valuable technology in enterprise computing. The remaining four papers each cover different industrial applications of aspect technology, which include a telecommunication platform, a framework for embedding user assistance in independently developed applications, a platform for digital publishing, and a framework for program code analysis and manipulation.