Managing Multi-concern Application Complexity in AspectSBASCO

AspectSBASCO is a new programming environment that integrates modern technologies (i.e. software components, parallel skeletons and aspects) to support the development of parallel and distributed scientific applications. This multi-paradigm approach provides high-level parallelism, reusability, interoperability and a clearer separation of concerns. This paper is focussed on a case study in which the programming model of AspectSBASCO is applied for the efficient solution of a relatively complex reaction-diffusion problem. In the application, the system of non-linear PDEs is solved in parallel using skeleton abstractions for domain decomposition methods. In addition, other concerns including distributed simulation persistence, mesh adaptation procedures, dynamic processor re-mapping and state variables communication are implemented in a modular way using (un)pluggable aspects. This style of application development leads to a better system decomposition, which is the key to improving software evolution, maintenance, productivity and reliability.