Handling Conflicts in Aspectual Requirements Compositions

Composing aspectual concerns with base concerns may raise conflicting situations that need to be identified and resolved. A conflict is detected whenever two or more concerns that contribute negatively to each other and have the same importance need to be composed together. This paper discusses the use of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods to support aspectual conflict management in the context of Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering. The final solution relies on the use of the obtained concern rankings to handle unresolved conflicts. An illustrative example is presented to discuss how MCDM methods can be used for aspectual conflict handling.