Designing software architectures with an aspect-oriented architecture description language

Abstract

A great deal of languages have emerged and have demonstrated the advantages that Aspect-Oriented Programming offers. For this reason, the aspect-oriented approach is being introduced into the early phases (analysis and design) of the software life cycle. In this work, we present an Aspect-Oriented Architecture Description Language (AOADL) to specify software architectures of complex, dynamic and distributed software systems. This AOADL follows the PRISMA approach, which integrates the advantages of Component-Based Software Development (CBSD) and Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD). The PRISMA AOADL combines components and aspects in an elegant and novel way achieving a better management of crosscutting-concerns. In addition, it is independent of the technology, and it has great expressive power in order to facilitate the automatic code generation from its specifications. In this work, we demonstrate how PRISMA AOADL improves the management, maintainability and reusability of software architectures introducing the notion of aspect in its ADL. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.