A Possible Design Notation for Aspect Oriented Programming

Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) cuts across (and supplements) conventional programming to focus on emergent entities. In an analogous fashion, a visual notation called UCMs (Use Case Maps) cuts across (and supplements) conventional program-design notations to focus on emergent entities. Where AOP represents emergent entitities in textual terms, the UCM notation represents them as visual paths. The notation was developed as an aid to designing and understanding emergent entities in complex systems, without having AOP in mind (or even knowing about it). However, there is so much commonality of ideas that the UCM notation may be ready made to be to AOP what notations like Rational Rose and UML are to conventional programs. In its favour for this purpose are the following facts: the notation is now relatively mature after several years of development, is thoroughly documented in a book and many papers, has a supporting demonstration-of-concept graphical tool which is being used to front-end it to some interesting applications of the kind for which AOP is intended, and has been tested and refined on practical systems of industrial scale and complexity.