Reusing non-functional concerns across languages

Emerging languages are often source-to-source compiled to mainstream ones, which offer standardized, fine-tuned implementations of non-functional concerns (NFCs)-including persistence, security, transactions, and testing. Because these NFCs are specified through metadata such as XML configuration files, compiling an emerging language to a mainstream one does not include NFC implementations. Unable to access the mainstream language's NFC implementations, emerging language programmers waste development effort reimplementing NFCs. In this paper, we present a novel approach to reusing NFC implementations across languages by automatically translating metadata. To add an NFC to an emerging language program, the programmer declares metadata, which is then translated to reuse the specified NFC implementation in the source-to-source compiled mainstream target language program. By automatically translating metadata, our approach eliminates the need to reimplement NFCs in the emerging language. As a validation, we add unit testing and transparent persistence to X10 by reusing implementations of these NFCs in Java and C++, the X10 backend compilation targets. The reused persistence NFC is efficient and scalable, making it possible to checkpoint and migrate processes, as demonstrated through experiments with third-party X10 programs. These results indicate that our approach can effectively reuse NFC implementations across languages, thus saving development effort.