Managing Variability Complexity in Aspect-Oriented Modeling

Aspect-Oriented Modeling (AOM) approaches propose to model reusable aspects that can be composed in different systems at a model level. To improve the reusability, several contributions have pointed out the needs of variability in the AOM approaches. Nevertheless, the support of variability makes more complex the aspect design and the introduction of several dimensions of variability (advice, pointcut and weaving) creates a combinatorial explosion of variants and a risk of inconsistency in the aspect model. As the integration of an aspect model may be complex, it is essential that the AOM framework ensures the consistency of the resulting model. This paper presents an approach describing how to ensure that an aspect model with variability can be safely integrated into an existing model. The verifications include static checking of aspect models consistency and dynamic checking through testing with a focus on the parts of the model that are impacted by the aspect.