Transformation of aspect-oriented requirements specifications for reactive systems into aspect-oriented design specifications

Model-driven engineering (MDE) promises faster and more reliable software development processes. A key factor of MDE is the transformation of models, allowing a software engineer to use the most appropriate modeling notation for a particular task. The earlier transformations can be applied during software development, the greater the potential cost savings. To that effect, we report on the transformation of aspect-oriented models for reactive systems development, i.e., from a scenario-based requirements model into a UML-based design model. We use Aspect-oriented Use Case Maps (AoUCM) as the requirements notation and Reusable Aspect Models (RAM) as the design notation. While AoUCM is ideally suited for the specification of the system workflow comprised of interactions between the environment and the system, RAM excels in providing a design view of system structure and defining the data dimension of the system including inputs and outputs. As the more abstract AoUCM models are transformed into more concrete RAM models, MDE ensures that the AoUCM workflow specifications do not have to be modeled again in RAM, thus avoiding a duplication of effort. We present transformation algorithms to show that an AoUCM-to-RAM mapping is indeed feasible and report on initial tool support for the transformation.