Position Paper on Aspect-Oriented Modeling: Issues on Representing Crosscutting Features

This paper deals with the design of crosscutting features in general and in the UML in particular. We postulate a couple of issues that we think an aspect-oriented designer is faced with when designing crosscutting features. These issues include the independent specification of the crosscutting details and of where to crosscut, the designation of crosscut or referenced elements, the characterization of the composition strategy, and the abstract representation of crosscutting features in the overall design model. Then, we contemplate ways to obey these issues using the UML. In that contemplation, we concentrate on the design of the details of crosscutting features, i.e., the separate specification of the elements that crosscut a given decomposition and of the join points at which that crosscutting takes place, as well as the distinct designation of elements belonging to the crosscut decomposition that are used (e.g., referenced) by the crosscutting elements.