Aspect-oriented analysis applied to the space domain

This paper presents an aspect metadata approach, which has been developed in the scope of the "Aspect Specification for the Space Domain" project. This approach is based on XML and XML Schema technologies, enabling a rigorous knowledge representation. The proposed approach has been applied to a real complex system, the "Space Environment Support System", enabling a comparison and evaluation between the proposed approach and the "traditional" requirements analysis methods used during the development of the original version of the system. This paper presents a full description of both the identified metadata concepts and their relationships. The metadata concepts and associated instances have been stored in a Metadata Repository that provides simple navigation facilities between concepts. The Metadata Repository also enables the automatic generation of documentation.