The Six concerns for Separation of Concerns

The Six concerns for Separation of Concerns

Mehmet Aksit, Bedir Tekinerdogan, Lodewijk Bergmans. 2001. (View Paper → )

Despite a common agreement on the necessity of the application of the separation of concerns (SOC) principle, there is not yet a consensus for its key issues. The separation of the concerns is usually based on the adopted programming paradigm, the applied method or even the programming language. This paper presents the so-called six `C' properties that can be applied as a guideline for defining and evaluating the approaches that adopt the SOC principle.

The 6 Concerns:

1. Concern-Oriented: focusing on distinct aspects of a system.
2. Canonicality: ensuring that each concern is handled in one place only.
3. Composability: the ability to combine concerns together effectively.
4. Computability: the concerns should be computable or able to be processed by a computer.
5. Closure Property: the ability of a system to remain complete and coherent after a concern is added or modified.
6. Certifiability: it should be possible to validate each concern independently.