Aspect mining from a modelling perspective

Aspect mining aims at identifying, analysing, and refactoring crosscutting concerns throughout a legacy system for the purpose of improving software modularisation. This paper presents our investigation into raising the benefits of aspect mining to high-level domain-specific models. A key contribution is the capability to identify crosscutting concerns early in development, which will assist in the modularisation of a design through aspects, before proceeding to the implementation level. Furthermore, our experience has led us to believe that aspects are easier to identify at the modelling level, because much of the accidental complexities of implementation concerns are not present in the corresponding modelling abstractions.