Concern modeling in the concern manipulation environment

Abstract

The Concern Manipulation Environment (CME) is an AOSD environment in which software is organized and manipulated in terms of concerns. This paper is about ConMan, the CME concern manager, which supports the identification, definition, encapsulation, extraction and composition of concerns. ConMan models software in terms of concerns, relationships, constraints, units, artifacts, and associated information. The concern model is multidimensional and concerns can be defined extensionally and/or intensionally. ConMan is neutral with respect to artifact types and formalisms, and it can be used with both aspect-oriented and non-Aspect oriented software and meth-ods. ConMan is intended to serve both as a tool for directly modeling concerns and as a platform for de-veloping alternative concern-modeling approaches.