Separation of concerns is at the core of software development. It refers to the ability to identify, encapsulate and manipulate those parts of a software system that are relevant to a particular concept, aspect, feature, perspective, goal or issue.
Object-orientation has greatly improved upon the degree of separation of concerns. However, achieving good separation of concerns is still very hard because different development activities involve concerns of different kinds. Many of these concerns do not align well with a natural decomposition into objects and classes. For example, changing a data representation in an object-oriented system might involve a single class, or a few closely related classes. Here object-orientation is most effective. On the other hand, adding a new feature to a system may involve invasive changes to many classes.
This has inspired a growing field of research surrounding what is now called aspect-oriented software development (AOSD). AOSD is trying to take the next step towards even better separation of concerns beyond objects. This workshop is one in a long series of related workshops, on aspect-oriented programming, adaptive software, multidimensional separation of concerns, advanced separation of concerns and software composition, that were held at several ECOOP, OOPSLA and ICSE conferences.
We are now soliciting position papers reporting on both research and experience related to AOSD, across the software-development life cycle. This includes but is not limited to the following categories:
Attendance at the workshop is by invitation, and will be limited to facilitate lively discussion and the exchange of ideas. Prospective participants should submit a 4-6 page position paper, in Postscript, PDF, Microsoft Word, or plain ASCII format to rfilman@mail.arc.nasa.gov by August 3, 2001, 17:00 PDT. All submissions must include the category (A-G) of the paper and the full contact information of at least one author. Invitations will be extended by September 3, in time for the OOPSLA early registration deadline of September 6.