Toward an Aspect Oriented ADL for Embedded Systems

Managing embedded systems complexity and scalability is one of the most important problems in software development. To better address this problem, it is very recommended to have an abstraction level high enough to model complex systems. Architectural description languages (ADLs) intend to model these systems and manage their structure at a high abstraction level. Traditional ADLs do not provide appropriate formalisms to separate any kind of crosscutting concerns. This frequently results in poor descriptions of the software architectures and a tedious adaptation to constantly changing user requirements and specifications. AOSD (Aspect Oriented Software Development) deals with these problems by considering crosscutting concerns in software development. The effectiveness of AOSD appears when aspect concepts are considered throughout the software's life-cycle. In this paper, we propose a new aspect language called AO4AADL that adequately manipulates aspect oriented concepts at the software architecture level to master complexity and ensure scalability.