This library provides the following enhancements to MagicDraw's APIs:

• Enhanced MD Browser context action

• Enhanced MD Draw Path action

• Load Module Migration Interceptor

To enable these enhancements at runtime in MD, this library uses the so-called load-time weaving strategy. AspectJ is an aspect-oriented extension to Java. Because AspectJ operates at the level of bytecode, it is also applicable to other languages like Scala that compile to the JVM.

Whereas interface and class are the basic units of modularity in object-oriented programming, AspectJ adds the concept of join point -- a point in the flow of program execution -- and a few related constructs as the basic unit of modularity in aspect-oriented programming:

• a pointcut selects one or more join points to access runtime values at those points,
• an advice is a piece of code that will be executed when the joint points of a pointcut will be reached and that will have access to the pointcut's runtime values.

Executing AspectJ code requires weaving all the join points, pointcuts and advice into the existing code where each joint point can possibly be triggered at runtime, where each pointcut may access runtime values at such join points and where advice code may need to be executed. Since this weaving process operates at the level of JVM bytecode, the available strategies fall into two categories depending on when the JVM bytecode is modified:

• Early: compile-time weaving and post-compile weaving occur during development, resulting in jar files with all the applicable join points, pointcuts and advice already woven.

  Pros: No runtime weaving overhead

  Cons: Requires using the modified jar files with woven aspects instead of the original unmodified jar files

• Late: load-time weaving examines each jar file loaded and weaves all applicable join points, pointcuts and advice before execution

  Pros: No modification of existing jar files

  Cons: Runtime weaving overhead (only when a library is loaded)

This package uses the Late load-time weaving strategy and uses filters to minimize the runtime overhead of the weaving process when loading libraries.