20,332 research outputs found
Recovering Architectural Variability of a Family of Product Variants
A Software Product Line (SPL) aims at applying a pre-planned systematic reuse
of large-grained software artifacts to increase the software productivity and
reduce the development cost. The idea of SPL is to analyze the business domain
of a family of products to identify the common and the variable parts between
the products. However, it is common for companies to develop, in an ad-hoc
manner (e.g. clone and own), a set of products that share common
functionalities and differ in terms of others. Thus, many recent research
contributions are proposed to re-engineer existing product variants to a SPL.
Nevertheless, these contributions are mostly focused on managing the
variability at the requirement level. Very few contributions address the
variability at the architectural level despite its major importance. Starting
from this observation, we propose, in this paper, an approach to reverse
engineer the architecture of a set of product variants. Our goal is to identify
the variability and dependencies among architectural-element variants at the
architectural level. Our work relies on Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to
analyze the variability. To validate the proposed approach, we experimented on
two families of open-source product variants; Mobile Media and Health Watcher.
The results show that our approach is able to identify the architectural
variability and the dependencies
Traceability for Model Driven, Software Product Line Engineering
Traceability is an important challenge for software organizations. This is true for traditional software development and even more so in new approaches that introduce more variety of artefacts such as Model Driven development or Software Product Lines. In this paper we look at some aspect of the interaction of Traceability, Model Driven development and Software Product Line
Composition and Self-Adaptation of Service-Based Systems with Feature Models
The adoption of mechanisms for reusing software in pervasive systems has not yet become standard practice. This is because the use of pre-existing software requires the selection, composition and adaptation of prefabricated software parts, as well as the management of some complex problems such as guaranteeing high levels of efficiency and safety in critical domains. In addition to the wide variety of services, pervasive systems are composed of many networked heterogeneous devices with embedded software. In this work, we promote the safe reuse of services in service-based systems using two complementary technologies, Service-Oriented Architecture and Software Product Lines. In order to do this, we extend both the service discovery and composition processes defined in the DAMASCo framework, which currently does not deal with the service variability that constitutes pervasive systems. We use feature models to represent the variability and to self-adapt the services during the composition in a safe way taking context changes into consideration. We illustrate our proposal with a case study related to the driving domain of an Intelligent Transportation System, handling the context information of the environment.Work partially supported by the projects TIN2008-05932,
TIN2008-01942, TIN2012-35669, TIN2012-34840 and CSD2007-0004 funded by
Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER; P09-TIC-05231 and
P11-TIC-7659 funded by Andalusian Government; and FP7-317731 funded by EU. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional AndalucĂa Tec
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Using problem descriptions to represent variabilities for context-aware applications
This paper investigates the potential use of problem descriptions to represent and analyse variability in context-aware software products. By context-aware, we refer to recognition of changes in properties of external domains, which are recognised as affecting the behaviour of products. There are many reasons for changes in the operating environment, from fluctuating resources upon which the product relies, to different operating locations or the presence of objects. There is an increasing expectation for software intensivedevices to be context-aware which, in turn, adds further variability to problem description and analysis. However, we argue in this paper that the capture of contextual variability on current variability representations and analyses has yet to be explored. We illustrate the representation of this type of variability in a pilot study, and conclude with lessons learnt and an agenda for further work
Some Findings Concerning Requirements in Agile Methodologies
gile methods have appeared as an attractive alternative to conventional methodologies. These methods try to reduce the time to market and, indirectly, the cost of the product through flexible development and deep customer involvement. The processes related to requirements have been extensively studied in literature, in most cases in the frame of conventional methods. However, conclusions of conventional methodologies could not be necessarily valid for Agile; in some issues, conventional and Agile processes are radically different. As recent surveys report, inadequate project requirements is one of the most conflictive issues in agile approaches and better understanding about this is needed. This paper describes some findings concerning requirements activities in a project developed under an agile methodology. The project intended to evolve an existing product and, therefore, some background information was available. The major difficulties encountered were related to non-functional needs and management of requirements dependencies
A Model-Based Approach to Managing Feature Binding Time in Software Product Line Engineering
Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) is a software reuse paradigm for developing software products, from managed reusable assets, based on analysis of commonality and variability (C & V) of a product line. Many approaches of SPLE use a feature as a key abstraction to capture the C&V. Recently, there have been increasing demands for the provision of flexibility about not only the variability of features but also the variability of when features should be selected (i.e., variability on feature binding times). Current approaches to support variations of feature binding time mostly focused on ad hoc implementation mechanisms. In this paper, we first identify the challenges of feature binding time management and then propose an approach to analyze the variation of feature binding times and use the results to specify model-based architectural components for the product line. Based on the specification, components implementing variable features are parameterized with the binding times and the source codes for the components and the connection between them are generated
Variability and Evolution in Systems of Systems
In this position paper (1) we discuss two particular aspects of Systems of
Systems, i.e., variability and evolution. (2) We argue that concepts from
Product Line Engineering and Software Evolution are relevant to Systems of
Systems Engineering. (3) Conversely, concepts from Systems of Systems
Engineering can be helpful in Product Line Engineering and Software Evolution.
Hence, we argue that an exchange of concepts between the disciplines would be
beneficial.Comment: In Proceedings AiSoS 2013, arXiv:1311.319
A Systematic Review of Tracing Solutions in Software Product Lines
Software Product Lines are large-scale, multi-unit systems that enable
massive, customized production. They consist of a base of reusable artifacts
and points of variation that provide the system with flexibility, allowing
generating customized products. However, maintaining a system with such
complexity and flexibility could be error prone and time consuming. Indeed, any
modification (addition, deletion or update) at the level of a product or an
artifact would impact other elements. It would therefore be interesting to
adopt an efficient and organized traceability solution to maintain the Software
Product Line. Still, traceability is not systematically implemented. It is
usually set up for specific constraints (e.g. certification requirements), but
abandoned in other situations. In order to draw a picture of the actual
conditions of traceability solutions in Software Product Lines context, we
decided to address a literature review. This review as well as its findings is
detailed in the present article.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, 7 table
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