Aspect-oriented model-driven code generation approach for improving code reusability and maintainability

Software development teams always need methods that can help in producing high-quality software with reduced development effort and delivery time. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) as well as Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) techniques help in reducing the delivery time, and also positively contribute to quality of the produced software. Through the use of AOSD techniques in combination with MDE, an integration of excellent abstraction mechanisms of MDE and capabilities of AOSD with regards to modularity and composition of concerns can be perceived, which is expected to enhance the positive effects of both techniques. To this end, different integration approaches have appeared in literature, but aspect-oriented code generation has advantages over the other approaches. Consequently, a number of aspect-oriented code generation approaches have been offered, but all such approaches lack several features mandatory to materialize a workable integration of aspect technologies in the context of MDE. To address these issues, this research was conducted to present an approach for aspect-oriented model-driven code generation, which focuses on elaborating the conceptual relationship between design models and the implementation code, and exploits the same to obtain aspect-oriented code that is more reusable and maintainable. The key outcomes of this research are the elaboration of the conceptual mappings between elements of visual design and constructs of the code, mapping of the visual models to implementation-specific text-based models, and a technique for generation of aspect-oriented code. The applicability of the proposed approach is shown by the use of case studies, whereas the quality of the approach is measured using reusability and maintainability metrics. A comparison of the proposed approach with existing approaches substantiates its efficacy in terms of reusability and maintainability of code, showing an outperformance of other approaches by the proposed approach against 78% of the employed quality metrics

Quality-aware model-driven service engineering

Service engineering and service-oriented architecture as an integration and platform technology is a recent approach to software systems integration. Quality aspects ranging from interoperability to maintainability to performance are of central importance for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed service-based systems. Architecture models can substantially influence quality attributes of the implemented software systems. Besides the benefits of explicit architectures on maintainability and reuse, architectural constraints such as styles, reference architectures and architectural patterns can influence observable software properties such as performance. Empirical performance evaluation is a process of measuring and evaluating the performance of implemented software. We present an approach for addressing the quality of services and service-based systems at the model-level in the context of model-driven service engineering. The focus on architecture-level models is a consequence of the black-box character of services

A taxonomy of asymmetric requirements aspects

The early aspects community has received increasing attention among researchers and practitioners, and has grown a set of meaningful terminology and concepts in recent years, including the notion of requirements aspects. Aspects at the requirements level present stakeholder concerns that crosscut the problem domain, with the potential for a broad impact on questions of scoping, prioritization, and architectural design. Although many existing requirements engineering approaches advocate and advertise an integral support of early aspects analysis, one challenge is that the notion of a requirements aspect is not yet well established to efficaciously serve the community. Instead of defining the term once and for all in a normally arduous and unproductive conceptual unification stage, we present a preliminary taxonomy based on the literature survey to show the different features of an asymmetric requirements aspect. Existing approaches that handle requirements aspects are compared and classified according to the proposed taxonomy. In addition,we study crosscutting security requirements to exemplify the taxonomy's use, substantiate its value, and explore its future directions

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

Variability and Evolution in Systems of Systems

In this position paper (1) we discuss two particular aspects of Systems of Systems, i.e., variability and evolution. (2) We argue that concepts from Product Line Engineering and Software Evolution are relevant to Systems of Systems Engineering. (3) Conversely, concepts from Systems of Systems Engineering can be helpful in Product Line Engineering and Software Evolution. Hence, we argue that an exchange of concepts between the disciplines would be beneficial.Comment: In Proceedings AiSoS 2013, arXiv:1311.319