Mapping aspects from requirements to architecture

Abstract

Different approaches provide support for aspect-oriented requirements engineering and for architectural design. Thanks to the first, requirements can be elicited, analysed, and specified in an aspect-oriented fashion. Similarly, software architecture can be designed taking into account the aspectual nature of certain concerns, improving component modularisation and, therefore, component reusability and architecture evolution and adaptability. Nevertheless, these two kinds of approaches emerged in isolation. As a consequence, it is yet not clear how to derive an aspect-oriented architecture from an aspect-oriented requirements specification. This chapter describes Model-Driven Development for Early Aspects (MDD4EA), an approach that aims at automating this process by using model transformations. The whole process is illustrated with a subset of the Car Crisis Management System case study.