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Separation of non-orthogonal concerns in software architecture and design

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Abstract

Separation of concerns represents an important principle for managing complexity in the design and architecture of large component-based software systems. The fundamental approach is to develop local solutions for individual concerns first, and combine them later into an overall solution for the complete system. However, comprehensive support for the integration of interdependent, possibly conflicting concerns related to synchronization behavior is still missing. In our work, we propose a sound solution for this complex type of composition, employing well-known UML description techniques as well as a rigorous formal model of component synchronization behavior. Based on this foundation, we describe a constructive synthesis algorithm which reliably detects conflicting concerns or generates a maximal synchronization behavior for software components with multiple interactions. An optimized implementation of the algorithm has been integrated into a CASE tool to illustrate feasibility and scalability of the presented technique to the example of a moderately large case study.

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  1. Computer Science Department, University of Paderborn, Warburger Str. 100, D-33098, Paderborn, Germany

    Holger Giese & Alexander Vilbig

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  1. Holger Giese
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  2. Alexander Vilbig
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Correspondence to Holger Giese.

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This work was partly developed in the course of the Special Research Initiative 614 – Self-optimizing Concepts and Structures in Mechanical Engineering – University of Paderborn, and was published on its behalf and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Alexander Vilbig contributed to this work during a research position at the Chair of Software and Systems Engineering of Technische Universitüt München.

Alexander Vilbig was born on February 10, 1968 in Karlsruhe, Germany. After achieving the European Baccalaureate at the European School Munich in 1986, he studied microbiology and computer science at Technische Universität München until 1996. During the following doctorate period at the Chair of Software and Systems Engineering at Technische Universität München, his research concentrated on component- and model-based software engineering both from a theoretical and practical perspective. In 2001, he successfully submitted his dissertation on component-based rapid prototyping in the domain of biomolecular sequence analysis. Since 2003 he works as a senior consultant at Stadtwerke München GmbH, the largest German municipal utility, leading an internal software development group for technical applications.

Holger Giese studied technical computer science at the University Siegen and received his engineering degree in October 1995. He received a doctorate in Computer Science at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Münster in February 2001. Since 2001, he is assistant professor for object-oriented specification of distributed systems in the Software Engineering Group of the University of Paderborn.

His main research interest is software engineering for distributed, component-based real-time systems using a model-driven development approach. This includes techniques and tools for modeling, analysis, validation, and verification of safety-critical distributed real-time systems using design patterns, components, and software architecture modeling.

He is member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the IEEE Computer Society, and the German Informatics Society (GI).

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Giese, H., Vilbig, A. Separation of non-orthogonal concerns in software architecture and design. Softw Syst Model 5, 136–169 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-005-0103-4

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