Shifting Up Reflection from the Implementation to the Analysis Level

Traditional methods for object-oriented analysis and modeling focus on the functional specification of software systems, i.e., application domain modeling. Non-functional requirements such as fault-tolerance, distribution, integration with legacy systems, and so on, have no clear collocation within the analysis process, since they are related to the architecture and workings of the system itself rather than the application domain. They are thus addressed in the system’s design, based on the partitioning of the system’s functionality into classes resulting from analysis. As a consequence, the smooth transition from analysis to design that is usually celebrated as one of the main advantages of the object-oriented paradigm does not actually hold for what concerns non-functional issues. A side effect is that functional and non-functional concerns tend to be mixed at the implementation level. We argue that the reflective approach whereby non-functional properties are ascribed to a meta-level of the software system may be extended “back to” analysis. Adopting a reflective approach in object-oriented analysis may support the precise specification of non-functional requirements in analysis and, if used in conjunction with a reflective approach to design, recover the smooth transition from analysis to design in the case of non-functional system’s properties.