Comparing Requirement Engineering Approaches for Handling Crosscutting Concerns

Abstract. A number ,of requirements ,engineering (RE) approaches ,have focused on addressing broadly scoped (non-functional) properties such as security, availability, etc. More recently, several aspect-oriented requirements engineering (AORE) approaches,have been proposed ,to tackle both ,functional and non-functional requirements of a crosscutting nature. In this paper, we analyse how some well-known RE approaches address crosscutting concerns. We compare,these approaches,with AORE approaches,in order ,to identify the additional contributions the latter have to offer while at the same time investigating what AORE can learn from traditional RE techniques. We use ,our comparison ,to derive ,a set ,of challenges ,to be ,addressed ,by AORE techniques. This paper is our position statement, rather then an attempt to precisely evaluate the discussed approaches, for which several large case studies are necessary.