A Taxonomy of Aspects in Terms of Crosscutting Concerns

Abstract

Aspect-orientation provides support for " Separation of Concerns"
by means of techniques that first isolate and then weave concerns.
Most work in aspect-orientation has achieved such goals at the programming
level, even also at the modeling level. Though, in some cases the
application of these techniques is independent of the problem itself. In
other words, the techniques for weaving either code or models are in
principle applicable to a number of problems without a clear criterion
to answer questions like: in what software processes we may actually
discuss aspect-orientation? This also brings other questions: what do we
consider an aspect?, how do we deal with it?, are aspects crosscutting
concerns? The first notions of aspect-orientation relate to crosscutting in
code. We consider this a bottom-up approach. We believe though, that
aspect-orientation can be better understood from an architectural perspective.
We call this a top-down approach. We explore the question of
''what makes an aspect an aspect" and '' when do aspects arise" from
a top-down perspective. This work relates to a definition of aspects in
terms of requirements traceability, proposes a classification, and altogether
a taxonomy.