An aspect-oriented reference architecture for Software Engineering Environments

Reusable and evolvable Software Engineering Environments (SEEs) are essential to software production and have increasingly become a need. In another perspective, software architectures and reference architectures have played a significant role in determining the success of software systems. In this paper we present a reference architecture for SEEs, named RefASSET, which is based on concepts coming from the aspect-oriented approach. This architecture is specialized to the software testing domain and the development of tools for that domain is discussed. This and other case studies have pointed out that the use of aspects in RefASSET provides a better Separation of Concerns, resulting in reusable and evolvable SEEs.

► We establish a reference architecture based on aspect for Software Engineering Environments.
► This architecture is specialized to the software testing domain.
► Tools are implemented based on the specialized reference architecture.
► Aspects in reference architecture bring benefits mainly regarding a better Separation of Concern.