Modeling interdependent concern behavior using extended activity models

Abstract

Software engineering considers many assets relevant for developing a software system, ranging from requirements to source code. In this context, a concern is a particular goal, concept, or area of interest that needs to be considered throughout a number of these assets. Even though the concerns in a software system usually have many interdependencies among each other, specifying the interdependent behavior of concerns is not a focus of today's (concern) modeling approaches. In this paper, we present an approach to model interdependent concern behavior using extended UML2 activity models. Within these concern activity models, we directly support the separation of interdependent concerns. In addition, we provide bindings of the concern activity models to UML class and interaction models to enable a detailed specification of concern behavior. © JOT, 2002.