Editorial: Special Section on Early Aspects

As software is becoming larger and ever more complex, new Software Engineering approaches addressing these complexities arise—for example, Model Driven Development, Software Product Lines Engineering, and Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) [1, 4]. AOSD has in its core the principle of separation of concerns [3] which aims to simplify system development by allowing the developers to focus on one matter of interest (or concern) at a time. In particular, AOSD advocates the idea that single hierarchical structures (e.g., classes in code or models, or use cases / viewpoints in requirements) are too limiting to effectively separate all concerns in complex systems [1]. Thus, additional structures (termed aspects) are useful for better separation of concerns which would otherwise be scattered and tangled across the single hierarchical structures. Work on Early Aspects, as exemplified by papers presented in this special section, studies the issues related to identification, separation, modelling, analysis, and composition of aspects in requirements and architectural artefacts. Questions considered include developing formalisms appropriate for identification and capturing early aspects; integration of different types of earlyaspect models into a consistent one; conflict management in and with early aspects; relating different Early-Aspect approaches; consideration of effort required for early aspect approaches; etc. This special section showcases some solutions for the early-aspects related issues with five full papers accepted at the Early Aspects’2010 Workshop [2]. These papers can be grouped into tree themes: Aspect Identification, Conflict Management, and Relationships between Technologies.