Early Aspects: 
Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design

These pages are maintained by: Bedir Tekinerdogan

Workshop Motivation

In a fashion similar to object-orientation, aspect-orientation is following a cycle of natural progression from programming to other software development stages. Recent work has shown a significant increase in the interest in aspect-oriented design and the development of guidelines and mechanisms for the purpose. While some initial work exists on applying aspects at the early stages of requirements engineering and architecture design the role of aspects at these stages and their relationship with existing separation of concerns mechanisms such as viewpoints and architectural views is poorly understood. Similarly aspect identification and aspect composition issues at these stages remain largely unexplored. Employing an aspect-oriented approach from the very early development stages can help capture crosscutting properties early on in the software life cycle; hence, improving the quality of the products and reducing adaptation, evolution and maintenance costs. The AOSD conference itself has a strong theme dedicated to analysis, maintenance, and processes and methodologies. While the conference will provide a forum for presenting concrete results the workshop will offer researchers and practitioners an informal, small group setting to share their experiences on applying aspect-orientation at the early software development stages. The discussions arising from the presentations and chosen discussion topics (conducted in small groups) will help clarify the presently little understood role of aspects at these stages and lay a strong foundation for aspect-oriented software development processes. 

Although some of the papers and discussion groups at previous aspect-orientation and advanced separation of concerns workshops (see http://aosd.net) have considered aspects at the early development stages, there has been no dedicated forum for the purpose. This workshop will be the first of its kind dedicated to this highly important topic and, due to the increasing interest of the community in moving beyond programming and considering aspects across the software life cycle, it is expected that it will become a regular event at future AOSD conferences.