Criteria for Comparison of Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering Approaches

Early-aspects consist of software requirements that are spread or tangled with other requirements and can be treated by Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering (AORE). Many AORE approaches have been proposed in recent years and have different features, strengths and limitations. Thus, it becomes difficult the decision making by: (i) software engineers, regards to the choice of the most appropriate approach to your needs, and (ii) AORE researchers, when the intent is to understand the differences between their own approaches and other ones in the literature. This paper aims to present a set of comparison criteria for AORE approaches, based on common features and variability of these approaches. Such criteria are applied on six of the main AORE approaches and the results can serve as a guide so that users can choose the approach that best meets their needs, and to facilitate the conduct of research in AORE.