Directives for Composing Aspect-Oriented Design Class Models

An aspect-oriented design model consists of a set of aspect models and a primary model. Each aspect model describes a feature that crosscuts elements in the primary model. Aspect and primary models are composed to obtain an integrated design view. In this paper we describe a composition approach that utilizes a merging algorithm and composition directives. Composition directives are used when the default merging algorithm is known or expected to yield incorrect models. Our prototype tool supports default class diagram composition.