Heterogeneous pointcut expressions

Over the last decade, many aspect-oriented (AO) programming and modeling languages have been developed. Pointcut expressions are a key concept of each of these languages as they define the patterns that must be matched for aspects to be applied to the base. To date, most pointcut expressions are constrained to one particular notation - the one for which they were designed - even though a goal of aspect-oriented software development should be to encapsulate a concern through all phases of software development. Motivated by examples of aspects that require characteristics expressed in different notations to be matched by their pointcut expressions, we argue that there should be more focus on heterogeneous pointcut expressions that can span several notations from potentially different development phases. We demonstrate such pointcuts in an example modeled with the aspect-oriented user requirements notation (AoURN) which combines notations for goal-oriented, scenario-based, and aspect-oriented modeling in one framework for requirements engineering.