Patterns for Handling Cross-Cutting Concerns in Model-Driven Software Development

Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP, see [AOP]) as well as Model-Driven Software Development (MDSD, see [MDSD]) are both becoming more and more important in modern software engineering. Both approaches attack important problems of traditional software development. AOP addresses the modularization (and thus, reuse) of cross-cutting concerns (CCC). MDSD allows developers to express structures and algorithms in a more problem-domain oriented language, and automates many of the tedious aspects of software development. But how do the two approaches relate? And how, if at all, can they be used together? This paper looks at both of these questions. The first one – how AOP and MDSD relate – is briefly discussed in the following paragraphs. How AOP and MDSD can be used together is the subject of the main discussion, where the paper presents six patterns of how MDSD and AOP can be used in conjunction. All but one pattern focus on the code phase aspect of MDSD. 1 I always use the term AOP instead of differentiating between AO in general and AOP as the AO approach to programming. Please see Appendix A for a differentiation between AOP and AOSD