Design Phase Analysis of Software Reliability Using Aspect-Oriented Programming

Software system may have various nonfunctional requirements such as reliability, security, performance and schedulability. If we can predict how well the system will meet such requirements at an early phase of software development, we can significantly save the total development cost and time. Among non-functional requirements, reliability is commonly required as the essential property of the system being developed. Therefore, many analysis methods have been proposed but methods that can be practically performed in the design phase are rare. In this paper we show how design-level aspects can be used to separate reliability concerns from essential functional concerns during software design. The aspect-oriented design technique described in this paper allows one to independently specify fault tolerance and essential functional concerns, and then weave the specifications to produce a design model that reflects both concerns. We illustrate our approach using an example.