On modeling interactions of early aspects with goals

Interactions in aspect-oriented models must be detected, documented, and resolved for aspects to be composed as desired. Generally, aspect interactions can be categorized as intrinsic (those that inherently exist among concerns) or technical (those that are dependent on technology and may change over time). Consequently, these types of interactions should be encapsulated properly. Goal models support reasoning about qualitative and quantitative relationships and are therefore ideally positioned to describe and reason about intrinsic interactions, because they are often of a qualitative nature. On the other hand, technical interactions are typically syntactic conflicts and dependencies which are modeled with different techniques. We present the Concern Interaction Graph (CIG), a goal model specialized for technical interactions in aspect-oriented models, which is integrated with other goal models for intrinsic concern interactions and stakeholder intentions. The CIG therefore allows global trade-offs among concerns that take intrinsic and technical interactions into account as well as the needs of stakeholders, while maintaining proper separation of concerns between intrinsic and technical interactions.