Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Flexible and Expressive Composition Rules with Aspect-oriented Use Case Maps (AoUCM)

  • Conference paper
Early Aspects: Current Challenges and Future Directions (EAW 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4765))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 259 Accesses

Abstract

Technologies based on aspect-orientation and multi-dimensional separation of concerns have given software engineers tools to better encapsulate concerns throughout the software lifecycle. Separated concerns must be composed, even during early lifecycle phases, to obtain an overall system understanding. Concern composition languages therefore must be expressive, scalable, and intuitive. Otherwise, gains achieved by concern separation are offset by the complexity of the composition rules. This paper focuses on a composition language for the requirements modeling phase and, in particular, on composition of concerns described with use cases or scenarios. We propose that existing composition techniques (such as before and after advices from AOP) are insufficient for requirements model composition because they do not support all composition rules frequently required for use cases or scenarios. Furthermore, composition rules for a modeling language should be visual and use the same notation as the modeling language. This paper presents Aspect-oriented Use Case Maps (AoUCM) and evaluates its flexible, expressive, and exhaustive composition technique. Moreover, the composition rules are expressed in the same notation already used for UCMs. The usefulness and necessity of our composition rules are demonstrated through examples modeled with the jUCMNav tool.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Amyot, D.: Introduction to the User Requirements Notation: Learning by Example. Computer Networks 42(3), 285–301 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. AOSD Community Wiki (accessed January 2007), http://aosd.net/wiki/index.php?title=Research_Projects and http://aosd.net/wiki/index.php?title=Tools_for_Developers

  3. Araújo, J., Moreira, A.: An Aspectual Use Case Driven Approach. VIII Jornadas de Ingeniería de Software y Bases de Datos (JISBD 2003), Alicante, Spain (November 2003)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Araújo, J., Whittle, J., Kim, D.: Modeling and Composing Scenario-Based Requirements with Aspects. In: RE 2004. Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, Kyoto, Japan, pp. 58–67. IEEE CS Press, Los Alamitos (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  5. AspectJ web site (accessed January 2007), http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/

  6. Barros, J.-P., Gomes, L.: Toward the Support for Crosscutting Concerns in Activity Diagrams: a Graphical Approach. In: Workshop on Aspect-Oriented Modelling (held with UML 2003), San Francisco, California, USA (October 2003)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Buhr, R.J.A., Casselman, R.S.: Use Case Maps for Object-Oriented Systems. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1996)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Buhr, R.J.A.: A Possible Design Notation for Aspect Oriented Programming. In: Jul, E. (ed.) ECOOP 1998. LNCS, vol. 1445, Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Buhr, R.J.A.: Use Case Maps as Architectural Entities for Complex Systems. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 24(12), 1131–1155 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Chitchyan, R., et al.: Survey of Analysis and Design Approaches. AOSD-Europe Report ULANC-9 (May 2005) (acc. January 2007), http://www.aosd-europe.net/deliverables/d11.pdf

  11. Clarke, S., Baniassad, E.: Aspect-Oriented Analysis and Design: The Theme Approach. Addison Wesley, Reading (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  12. de Bruin, H., van Vliet, H.: Quality-Driven Software Architecture Composition. Journal of Systems and Software 66(3), 269–284 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Jacobson, I., Ng, P.-W.: Aspect-Oriented Software Development with Use Cases. Addison-Wesley, Reading (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kiczales, G., Lamping, J., Mendhekar, A., Maeda, C., Lopes, C., Loingtier, J.-M., Irwin, J.: Aspect-Oriented Programming. In: Aksit, M., Matsuoka, S. (eds.) ECOOP 1997. LNCS, vol. 1241, pp. 220–242. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Moreira, A., Araújo, J.: Handling Unanticipated Requirements Change with Aspects. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE), Banff, Canada (June 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Moreira, A., Araújo, J., Brito, I.: Crosscutting Quality Attributes for Requirements Engineering. In: SEKE. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Ischia, Italy, pp. 167–174. ACM Press, New York (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Mussbacher, G., Amyot, D., Weiss, M.: Visualizing Aspect-Oriented Requirements Scenarios with Use Case Maps. In: International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Visualization (REV 2006), Minneapolis, USA (September 2006)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Mussbacher, G., Amyot, D., Weiss M.: Visualizing Early Aspects with Use Case Maps. To appear in Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development

    Google Scholar 

  19. Roy, J.-F., Kealey, J., Amyot, D.: Towards Integrated Tool Support for the User Requirements Notation. In: Gotzhein, R., Reed, R. (eds.) SAM 2006. LNCS, vol. 4320, pp. 198–215. Springer, Heidelberg (2006), http://www.softwareengineering.ca/jucmnav

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Tarr, P., Ossher, H., Harrison, W., Sutton, S.M.: N degrees of separation: Multidimensional separation of concerns. In: Proceedings of the 21st Intl. Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 99), IEEE, Los Angeles, ACM press, pp 107–119 (May 1999)

    Google Scholar 

  21. UCM Virtual Library (accessed January 2007), http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/twiki/bin/view/UCM/UCMVirtualLibrary

  22. URN - Goal-oriented Requirement Language (GRL), ITU-T Draft Recommendation Z.151. Geneva, Switzerland (September 2003) (accessed January 2007), http://www.UseCaseMaps.org/urn

  23. URN - Use Case Map Notation (UCM), ITU-T Draft Recommendation Z.152. Geneva, Switzerland (September 2003) (accessed January 2007), http://www.UseCaseMaps.org/urn

  24. User Requirements Notation (URN) - Language Requirements and Framework, ITU-T Recommendation Z.150. Geneva, Switzerland (February 2003) (accessed January 2007), http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/publications/recs.html

  25. Whittle, J., Araújo, J.: Scenario Modelling with Aspects. IEE Proceedings - Software 151(4), 157–172 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Whittle, J., Araújo, J., Moreira, A.: Composing Aspect Models with Graph Transformations. In: Early Aspects at ICSE: Workshop in Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design, Shanghai, China (May 2006)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Whittle, J., Araújo, J., Moreira, A., Rabbi, R.: Graphical Composition of State-Dependent Use Case Behavioral Models. ISE Department Technical Report, George Mason University, ISE-TR-07-01 (accessed January 2007), http://ise.gmu.edu/techrep/2007

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SITE, University of Ottawa, 800 King Edward, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada

    Gunter Mussbacher & Daniel Amyot

  2. Information & Software Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA

    Jon Whittle

  3. School of Computer Science, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Michael Weiss

Authors
  1. Gunter Mussbacher
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Daniel Amyot
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Jon Whittle
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Michael Weiss
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Ana Moreira John Grundy

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Mussbacher, G., Amyot, D., Whittle, J., Weiss, M. (2007). Flexible and Expressive Composition Rules with Aspect-oriented Use Case Maps (AoUCM). In: Moreira, A., Grundy, J. (eds) Early Aspects: Current Challenges and Future Directions. EAW 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4765. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76811-1_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76811-1_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-76810-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-76811-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics