Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology

 

Special Issue on: "Concern Oriented Software Evolution"

Guest Editors:
Hongji Yang, De Montfort University, UK
William C. Chu, TungHai University, Taiwan
Jianjun Zhao, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

Concern became a useful concept for software system development initially in terms of decomposing a software system into smaller, more manageable and comprehensible modules. A concern includes a property or an area of interest ranging from high-level notions to low-level notions. It can be functional or non-functional. Concern Orientations (CO), such as Aspect Orientation (AO), Subject Orientation (SO), Feature Orientation (FO) and so on, have facilitated software development and therefore naturally how they are impacting software evolution is worth studying academically, because separating concerns can be thought as a technique with potential, e.g., in identifying, encapsulating and manipulating only those parts of software that are relevant to a particular concept, goal, or purpose in understanding an existing system.

Aspect Oriented programming attempts to abstract out features common to many parts of the code beyond simple functional modules and thereby to improve the quality of software through enabling clean modularisation of crosscutting concerns. Its feature is to provide some explicit mechanisms to modularly represent and separate the crosscutting concerns in software systems. Subject Oriented programming supports building object-oriented systems as compositions of subjects, extending systems by composing them with new subjects, and integrating systems by composing them with one another. Its feature is to complement object-oriented programming, solving a number of problems that arise when OOP is used to develop large systems of interoperating or integrated applications. Feature Oriented programming is dealing with life-cycle entities in a means of logically modularised requirement and its feature is to tie between requirements, design, implementation and test cases, i.e., to link the user and developer perspectives of a system.

This special issue is interested in how these Concern Oriented techniques are impacting Software Evolution, which is an essential part of the software project life and often costs up to 70% of a software project budget. The special issue will dedicate a number of articles to provide evidences and concluding remarks on this topic at the state of art level. These articles can, for example, be organised in terms of the following:

Technical advances of each technique: theory, empirical studies, tools

Application of each technique in Software Evolution

Advantages and disadvantages over each other in Software Evolution, and

Integration of these techniques for Software Evolution.

This special issue aims at allowing the most suitable materials for a given application to be identified from the wide range of available materials and allowing rapid retrieval of information and application of selection techniques. So, academicians and professionals from all over the world are invited to participate in this issue in order to facilitate the task of the selection process of materials by sharing and building up knowledge.

Subject Coverage
The topics relevant to this Special Issue on Concern Oriented Software Evolution may include, but are not limited to:

Aspect Oriented programming

Feature Oriented programming

Subject Oriented programming

Separation of concerns

Software architectures

Model Driven Architecture and UML

General-purpose and domain-specific

Methods and patterns for AO, FO, SO systems

Verification and validation of AO, FO, SO systems

Distributed systems and middleware

Metrics for AO, FO, SO systems

Experience reports on applying AO, FO, SO

Tool support for AO, FO, SO techniques

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Papers Submission section under Author Guidelines

To submit a paper, please go to Submission of Papers

This is our preferred route for submitting papers; please use it if at all possible. However, if you experience any problems submitting papers in this way, an alternative route is suggested below

Important Dates

Deadline for paper submission: 28th February 2006

Acceptance notification: 21st April 2006

Final version due: 31st May 2006