Towards the software architectural design with an integrated aspect-oriented modeling approach

Architecture description languages (ADLs) are a sound and convenient approach to software architecture representation. Unfortunately traditional ADLs lack the ability to describe the crosscutting concerns and crosscutting interaction in the software architecture, leading to the difficulties in comprehension, evolution and reusability of software architectural design decisions. This paper focuses on the modular representation of architectural concerns and their multiple composition forms, and presents a novel aspect-oriented ADL, which introducing a special kind of architectural unit called aspectual component to encapsulate crosscutting behaviors and features, extending the semantic of conventional connectors to describe the complicated interactions among the software architecture elements. We use a Web-based information system as the main case study.