Early aspects are crosscutting concerns that exist in requirements analysis, domain analysis and architecture design activities of software lifecycle. Work on early aspects focuses on systematically identifying, modularizing, and analyzing such crosscutting concerns and their impact at these early phases of the software development.

The general aim of this workshop is to facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas in requirements engineering, domain engineering, software architecture design, and aspect-oriented software development in order to identify the problems and potential solutions, and continue the maturation of Early Aspects as a discipline. The present edition of the workshop will provide a forum for an open set of early-aspects related topics, without restricting to a specific theme or domain.

The specific objectives of this ICSE 2009 workshop are:
(a) Solicit submissions of new research on early aspects. This year we have extended the list of topics in other editions of the workshop with new topics of interest such as dynamic early aspects, evaluation of early aspects, early aspects in industry and composition-related issues for early aspects. Other early aspects papers are also welcome;
(b) Initiate the creation of a wiki of early aspects approaches, which will develop an up-to-date repository of work on early aspects, will be built up.


Topics of Interest include, but are not limited to:

• Aspect-oriented requirements engineering
  • Identification and modelling of aspects in requirements?
  • Composition of early aspects;
  • Use of requirements level aspects for conflict identification and resolution;
• Aspect-oriented domain engineering
  • Deriving aspects from domain knowledge;
  • Composition of domain aspects;
  • Beyond well-known crosscutting concerns;
  • Linking early aspects with domain-specific applications (Distributed software systems, software product lines, ambient intelligence, P2P systems)
• Mapping between aspect-oriented requirements, domain analysis and architecture
  • Formal or informal mappings
  • Language features required to support aspect mapping;
• Aspect-oriented architecture design
  • Use of aspects to reason about architectures;
  • Evaluation of alternative architectures with aspects;
• Tool support and automation for aspect-orientation
• Formalisms and notations for specifying aspects
• Dynamic early aspects
  • Accommodation of run-time change in the requirement models
  • Run-time variability resolution in requirements and architecture, etc.
• Evaluation of Early Aspects
  • Aspect-oriented evaluation methods
  • Aspect-oriented metrics for early aspects
  • Change impact analysis for early aspects
• Early Aspects in Industry
  • Industry problems and practices
  • Successful stories of adoption of early aspects in industry
  • Empiric proofs
• Composition-related issues for early aspects
  • Semantics
  • Fragility
    

Workshop Format

The workshop will be highly interactive with a few presentations in the morning followed by group work for the rest of the day.

The participants will work in small groups, formed based on their specific interests. The group work will be focused on making a tangible progress by identifying possible solutions of the discussion problems; by furthering the problem understanding; by providing practical examples and motivation for the discussion topics, etc.

The last session of the workshop will be dedicated to integrating the results of the group discussions into the overall workshop results.

Important Dates

• 26 January (23.59 Apia, Samoa time), 2009: Abstract submission (CLOSED)
• 02 February (23.59 Apia, Samoa time), 2009: Paper submission (CLOSED)
• 13 February (23.59 Apia, Samoa time), 2009: Notifications sent to authors
• 16 February (23.59 Apia, Samoa time), 2009: Submission of camera-ready accepted papers
• 18 May, 2009: Workshop

Paper Submission Guidelines

Prospective participants are invited to submit a 4-6 page position paper. The submissions must conform to the ICSE submission rules (http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/events/icse2009/calls/format/).

All submissions will be reviewed by members of the program committee and the organizing committee for quality and relevance. Accepted papers will become part of the workshop proceedings and published on www.early-aspects.net. Paper should conform to ICSE submission standards and rules.

Submissions should be in PDF format, sent to both pinto[at]lcc.uma.es and rouza[at]comp.lancs.ac.uk.

Proceedings

Accepted papers will become part of the workshop proceedings and will also be published on workshop web site.

The present workshop is one of the 2 Early Aspects workshops planned for 2009. The other Early Aspects workshop is planned for AOSD in Charlottesville, USA, in March 2009 (Early Aspects Workshop at AOSD 2009).

Workshop Attendance

Though paper submission is highly desirable for attendance, a number of places for attendance without submission could be available, depending on the number of submissions received. Since only a limited number of places are available, submitting attendees will obviously be given priority. Potential non-submitting attendees are strongly advised to contact the organizers with an attendance request. Non-submitting attendees will be invited on "first come/contacted first served" basis.

Program Committee

Organising Committee

Updated: April 20, 2009