Extensions of UML to Model Aspect-oriented Software Systems

Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) has arisen as a new technology to support a better SoC (Separation of Concerns), intending to contribute to the development of reusable, maintainable, and evolvable software systems. Aspects have been also explored in the early life cycle phases, aiming at contributing to a more adequate development of aspect-oriented software systems. In this perspective, in order to better represent these systems, a diversity of extensions of the UML (Unified Modeling Language) has been proposed; however, there is a lack of a complete panorama that identify all these extensions. This paper presents an overview about which are possibly all extensions of the UML to represent aspect-oriented software systems. For this, we have used a technique proposed by Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE): the Systematic Mapping. As achieved results, we can observe a diversity of work; however, there is not a consensus about which are the more adequate or more used extensions. Based on this overview, interesting and important perspectives for future research can also be found.