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Aspect-oriented requirements engineering
Moreira A., Chitchyan R., Araújo J., Rashid A., Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated, New York, NY, 2013. 365 pp. Type: Book (978-3-642386-39-8)
Date Reviewed: Jun 30 2014

Those familiar with aspect-oriented programming (AOP) will recognize the term “aspect” from that discipline, which originated, along with the terminology, in the late 1990s [1]. Aspect-oriented requirements engineering (AORE), also called “early aspects,” aims to identify aspects, or crosscutting concerns, early in the requirements engineering process. The intent is to modularize these requirements to separate them from other system requirements to help manage them effectively. Crosscutting concerns that would be of interest in AORE include security, privacy, responsiveness, usability, and other features that affect more than one subsystem or component of a system. By identifying these early, or extracting them from existing requirements, managing requirements becomes simpler and the transition to architecture and software design is streamlined.

According to the publisher, this book is the first to consolidate research in different areas of AORE. The book is divided into five parts, comprising the major directions in recent AORE research. These range from automation of the identification of early aspects, to modeling and tracking crosscutting concerns, to issues arising from the complex interplay of aspects with other systems requirements. The last section includes chapters containing analyses of industry applications of AORE. An aspect-oriented modeling case study is included in the appendix, and provides a helpful practical touchpoint throughout the book.

Part 1 includes two chapters dealing specifically with issues around the management of requirements change when aspects are being managed. The first chapter describes the use of a specific tool to identify aspects in textual requirements and to help to refine and evolve system requirements and aspects. The second chapter is more theoretical, dealing with aspects in the context of dynamic goal models, but includes a practical demonstration using the crisis management system case study in the appendix.

Part 2 consists of a number of chapters addressing issues and investigation into the modeling and composition of crosscutting concerns. These chapters are concerned primarily with representing aspects in such a way that they are less fragile and dependent on various system requirements, and thus manageable in terms of volatility. These include the introduction of new modeling and composition approaches, as well as pointers to other research that will be of interest.

Part 3 is titled “Domain-Specific Use of AORE,” but might better be called “Specific Applications of AORE.” There are three chapters in this section dealing with different broad applications of AORE to software engineering problems. The first chapter concerns the derivation of aspect-oriented software architectures from aspect-oriented requirements specifications. The second addresses the issue of tracking the satisfaction of security requirements, and illustrates its conclusions using a case study. The third applies AORE to the issues of managing volatility in software requirements in general.

Part 4, “Aspect Interactions,” includes four chapters that address concerns around the aspect interaction problem. This problem arises from the presence of multiple aspects that are brought to bear on a single “joinpoint,” the point at which aspects interact with other system concerns. One method of mitigating issues arising from the aspect interaction problem is to identify conflicts in aspectual requirements early. The first chapter addresses the issue of identifying conflicts, while the third chapter introduces a novel approach for utilizing graph transformation to detect inconsistency in a behavior model. The second chapter describes approaches for dealing with and managing conflicts. The fourth chapter in this section discusses an AOP technique in the context of the problem of aspect ordering according to runtime conditions, from a requirements engineering perspective.

Part 5, “AORE in Industry,” will be helpful for those looking for specific examples of AORE applied to requirements problems in industry. The first chapter in this section discusses the application of AORE to banking applications. The second chapter provides an example of AORE in the gambling industry. The last chapter in this section addresses some of the difficulties in evaluating AORE practices, and provides some insight into future directions for evaluation.

This book is an organized collection of research papers covering the gamut of AORE thought in recent years. As such, it may not be as approachable as a more linear treatment; however, it will prove indispensable for both professionals and advanced students with an interest in the latest research. This discipline is broadly applicable to industry, as all software projects deal with aspectual requirements at various levels. These aspects need to be identified, reasoned about, and managed, and the techniques and tools presented here will be of great value in this respect.

Reviewer:  Nathan Carlson Review #: CR142452 (1409-0711)
1) Kiczales, G.; Lamping, J.; Mendhekar, A.; Maeda, C.; Lopes, C.; Loingtier, J.; Irwin, J. Aspect-oriented programming. Proc. of the European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming 1241 (1997), 220–242.
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Requirements/ Specifications (D.2.1 )
 
 
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