Aspect-oriented software development promotes improved separation of concerns by introducing a new modular unit, called aspect, for the modularization of crosscutting concerns. As a new kind of modular unit, aspects should have explicit interfaces that describe the way they interact with the rest of the system and how they affect other modules. This interaction can be homogeneous or heterogeneous. In this paper, we present crosscutting interfaces as a conceptual tool for dealing with the complexity of heterogeneous aspects at the design level. Crosscutting interfaces have been incorporated by the aSideML modeling language in order to enhance aspect description at the design level. Moreover, we present a modeling notation for the description of architecture-level aspects that also supports the explicit representation of crosscutting interfaces. Finally, we present two large-scale case studies we have performed using this modeling language that support our arguments in favor of crosscutting interfaces.
Aspect-oriented modeling; crosscutting interfaces; heterogeneous aspects; software design; software architecture; separation of concerns
