Separation of concerns for software evolution

This special issue reports on approaches that apply the idea of separation of concerns to software evolution. In this context, separation of concerns allows us to separate parts of the software that exhibit different rates of change or different types of change. This makes it possible to provide better evolution support for those parts that have a higher change rate, or to provide different evolution techniques for different views on the software. Another common way to achieve separation of concerns is by raising the level of abstraction to the level of software architectures, business rules and metamodels. This makes software evolution more manageable. The above ideas emerged as important conclusions of the workshop on Formal Foundations of Software Evolution, which was co-located with the Conference on Software Maintenance and Re-engineering in Lisbon in March 2001. Of the 12 original position papers, five have been selected for revision and inclusion in this special issue of the Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.