Aspect-Oriented Modeling - what it is and what it's good for

Google Tech Talks June 4, 2008 ABSTRACT In software engineering, aspects are concerns that cut across multiple modules. They can lead to the common problems of concern tangling and scattering: concern tangling is where software concerns are not represented independently of each other; concern scattering is where a software concern is represented in multiple remote places in a software artifact. Although aspect-oriented programming is relatively well understood, aspect-oriented modeling (i.e., the representation of aspects during requirements engineering, architecture, design) is still rather immature. Although a wide variety of approaches to aspect-oriented modeling have been suggested, there is, as yet, no common consensus on how aspect-oriented models should be captured, manipulated and reasoned about. This talk presents MATA (Modeling Aspects Using a Transformation Approach), which is a unified way of handling aspects for any well-defined modeling language. The talk will argue why MATA is necessary and highlight some of the key features of MATA. In particular, the talk will motivate the decision to base MATA on graph transformations and will describe an application of MATA to modeling security concerns. Speaker: Jon Whittle Prof. Jon Whittle joined Lancaster University in August 2007 as a Professor of Software Engineering. Previously, he was an Associate Professor at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA, and, prior to that, he was a researcher and contractor technical area lead at NASA Ames Research Center. In July 2007, he was awarded a highly prestigious Wolfson Merit Award from the Royal Society in the UK. Jon's research interests are in model-driven software development, formal methods, secure software development, requirements engineering and domain-specific methods for software engineering. His research has been recognized by a number of Best Paper awards, including the IEE Software Premium prize (with João Araújo). He is Chair of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering, Languages and Systems and has been a program committee member of this conference since 2002 (including experience track PC chair in 2006). He has served on over 30 program committees for international conferences and workshops. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Software and Systems Modeling. Jon has also been a guest editor of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, the Journal of Software Quality, and has co-edited two special issues of the Journal of Software and Systems Modeling.