In the following we will explain the research activities and the expected deliverables for a period of 4 years.

Year 1. Identification and specification of crosscutting concerns in software architecture design

The first year will be devoted to identifying and specifying aspects. To this aim, to identify the architectural aspects, the example GPSA system will be analysed in detail.

In parallel to these activities, a thorough literature study will be conducted on the topics of software architecture design and the relation to aspect-oriented software development. Current AOSD techniques and tools will be utilized and studied with respect to the identified aspects.

The result of this study will be the description of a set of relevant architectural aspects, evaluation of current architecture design and AOSD approaches in identifying and modelling these aspects and a set of requirements for improving the current practices.

To achieve these objectives, we will closely interact with our industrial partner and arrange regular meetings and workshops for knowledge transfer.

Year 2. Enhancing current architecture design methods and aspect specification techniques

The second year will be devoted to enhancing architecture design methods and aspect specification techniques. To this aim, first relevant aspects will be specified in a declarative way. Secondly, various aspect composition operators will be defined and implemented. In parallel to these, by interacting with our industrial partner, current architecture design methods and practices will be improved so that these methods will enable aspect identification and specification in a coherent manner.

Year 3. Architecture customisation

In the final year we will define architecture customisation techniques and tools. This work will utilize our research results on architecture design Synbad and tool environment Rumi.

Year 4. Experimentation