Aspect-Orientation: from Design to Code

ABSTRACT The AO paradigm focuses mainly at the implementation phases of the software lifecycle and is missing standardized concepts for early stages of the development lifecycle. The term Early Aspects refers to crosscutting properties at the requirements and architecture level and this paper addresses the separation of crosscutting concerns at the architecture design phases by offering AML (Aspect Modeling Language), a notation for aspect-oriented architecture design modeling that is standard UML conform. Within the notation, crosscutting artifacts are clearly encapsulated and completely kept apart from the business logic to foster their reuse. A clear separation of the AO language dependent from AO independent parts simplifies the support of a number of different AO languages and concepts. To extend the support beyond the architecture phase a code generator is presented addressing lowlevel design support by offering an automated mapping from design models to programming models to prevent inconsistencies among design and implementation

CASE Tool support for variability management in software product lines

Software product lines (SPL) aim at reducing time-to-market and increasing software quality through extensive, planned reuse of artifacts. An essential activity in SPL is variability management, i.e., defining and managing commonality and variability among member products. Due to the large scale and complexity of today’s software-intensive systems, variability management has become increasingly complex to conduct. Accordingly, tool support for variability management has been gathering increasing momentum over the last few years and can be considered a key success factor for developing and maintaining SPLs. While several studies have already been conducted on variability management, none of these analyzed the available tool support in detail. In this work, we report on a survey in which we analyzed 37 existing variability management tools identified using a systematic literature review to understand the tools’ characteristics, maturity, and the challenges in the field. We conclude that while most studies on variability management tools provide a good motivation and description of the research context and challenges, they often lack empirical data to support their claims and findings. It was also found that quality attributes important for the practical use of tools such as usability, integration, scalability, and performance were out of scope for most studies

CodeAbility Austria – Digital gestützte Programmierausbildung an österreichischen Universitäten

Qualitativ hochwertige Programmierausbildung an Universitäten stellt aufgrund von stark steigenden Zahlen von Studierenden, knapp bemessenen Lehrebudgets und Mangel an Lehrkräften eine große Herausforderung dar. Ziel des Projekts „CodeAbility Austria“ ist es, diesen universitären Rahmenbedingungen gerecht zu werden und Programmierlernplattformen bereitzustellen. Im Rahmen dieses Beitrags stellen wir das Projekt näher vor, präsentieren Ergebnisse unserer empirischen Untersuchungen hinsichtlich der Erfahrungen und Herausforderungen im Umgang mit Programmierlernplattformen in der universitären Lehre und geben einen Ausblick auf zukünftige Arbeiten. Dieses Projekt wurde am 1. Juni 2023 im Rahmen einer Online-Veranstaltung des BMBWF präsentiert. Die Präsentationsunterlagen finden Sie hier

Effects of Therapy in Oropharyngeal Dysphagia by Speech and Language Therapists: A Systematic Review

Medical and paramedical treatments should be evaluated according to current standards of evidence-based medicine. Evaluation of therapy in oropharyngeal dysphagia fits into this growing interest. A systematic review is given of the literature on the effects of therapy in oropharyngeal dysphagia carried out by speech therapists. Thus, the review excludes reports of surgical or pharmacological treatments. The literature search was performed using the electronic databases PubMed and Embase. All available inclusion dates up to November 2008 were used. The search was limited to English, German, French, Spanish, and Dutch publications. MESH terms were supplemented by using free-text words (for the period after January 2005). Fifty-nine studies were included. In general, statistically significant positive therapy effects were found. However, the number of papers was rather small. Moreover, diverse methodological problems were found in many of these studies. For most studies, the conclusions could not be generalized; comparison was hindered by the range of diagnoses, types of therapies, and evaluation techniques. Many questions remain about the effects of therapy in oropharyngeal dysphagia as performed by speech and language therapists. Although some positive significant outcome studies have been published, further research based on randomized controlled trials is needed

XWeave – Models and Aspects in Concert

Model-driven software development improves the way software is developed by capturing key features of the system in models which are developed and refined as the system is created. During the system’s lifecycle models are combined and transformed between different levels of abstraction and viewpoints. Aspectoriented techniques improve software development by providing modularization constructs for the encapsulation of crosscutting concerns. Existing research has already investigated many ways of combining the two paradigms. This paper contributes by presenting XWeave, a model weaver that supports weaving of both models and meta models. XWeave supports the composition of different architectural viewpoints and eases model evolution. Furthermore, the tool plays an important role in software product line engineering, as variable parts of architectural models can be woven according to some product configuration. The concepts are illustrated with an example of a home automation system

Handling Variability in Model Transformations and Generators

Software product line engineering aims to reduce development time, effort, cost, and complexity by taking advantage of the commonality within a portfolio of similar products. The effectiveness of a software product line approach directly depends on how well feature variability within the portfolio is implemented and managed throughout the development lifecycle, from early analysis through maintenance and evolution. Using DSLs and AO to implement product lines can yield significant advantages, since the variability can be implemented on a higher level of abstraction, in less detailed models. This paper illustrates how variability can be implemented in model-to-model transformations and code generators using aspect-oriented techniques. These techniques are important ingredients for the aspectoriented model-driven product line engineering approach presented in [13].