Dealing with system qualities during design and composition of aspects and modules: an agent and goal-oriented approach

Aspects are a recent modularization paradigm that supports the capturing of concerns that usually crosscut the modularization structure of software systems. However, no support is given for representing, capturing, analyzing and tracing how global qualities of the software system, such as performance, maintainability, or extensibility, are addressed during the design and composition of modules and aspects. Intentional agents are novel abstractions for encapsulating design goals and design options of software system artifacts during the design process. This paper proposes the use of intentional agents for capturing and analyzing how global quality concerns are addressed during the design and composition of modules and aspects. The “Intentional aspect” abstraction is introduced for dealing with the design of aspects, the composition of modules and aspects, and for linking aspects to elements within the implementation of the software system. The proposed approach is illustrated through examples taken from an implementation of O-Telos written in MS-Visual Basic