Aspects have made a visible impact on software design and programming. This is because the concept contributes to our understanding of system construction, modularization, and the articulation of important functional and non-functional concerns.
The theme of Aspects in Architectural Description is "How do aspects influence the description of architectures?" This is of interest to both software architects and system architects. The on-going revision of IEEE 1471 (now also ISO/IEC DIS 42010), Recommended practice for the architectural description of software-intensive systems, provides an opportunity for the aspects community to influence thinking in architecture, particularly with respect to how aspect concepts interact with the use of architectural viewpoints and the ability of aspects to capture non-functional concerns about architectures within architectural descriptions.
As demonstrated in the Early Aspects series of workshops, aspects have applicability for specifying architectural properties, both emergent properties of the system as a whole and the contributions of architectural components to emergent properties, including the ability to check architectural components against aspect 'requirements' for that component.
The results of this workshop should offer insights, guidance, and examples for the community using aspects and serve as useful input into the revision of ISO/IEC DIS 42010.
The First Workshop on Aspects in Architectural Description will be held 12 March 2007 at AOSD 2007, in Vancouver, British Columbia.