Selection of Software Product Line Implementation Components Using Recommender Systems: An Application to Wordpress

In software products line (SPL), there may be features which can be implemented by different components, which means there are several implementations for the same feature. In this context, the selection of the best components set to implement a given configuration is a challenging task due to the high number of combinations and options which could be selected. In certain scenarios, it is possible to find information associated with the components which could help in this selection task, such as user ratings. In this paper, we introduce a component-based recommender system, called (REcommender System that suggests implementation Components from selecteD fEatures), which uses information associated with the implementation components to make recommendations in the domain of the SPL configuration. We also provide a RESDEC reference implementation that supports collaborative-based and content-based filtering algorithms to recommend (i.e., implementation components) regarding WordPress-based websites configuration. The empirical results, on a knowledge base with 680 plugins and 187 000 ratings by 116 000 users, show promising results. Concretely, this indicates that it is possible to guide the user throughout the implementation components selection with a margin of error smaller than 13% according to our evaluation.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad RTI2018-101204-B-C22Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2014-55894-C2-1-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2017-88209-C2-2-RMinisterio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad MCIU-AEI TIN2017-90644-RED

Automated analysis of feature models: Quo vadis?

Feature models have been used since the 90's to describe software product lines as a way of reusing common parts in a family of software systems. In 2010, a systematic literature review was published summarizing the advances and settling the basis of the area of Automated Analysis of Feature Models (AAFM). From then on, different studies have applied the AAFM in different domains. In this paper, we provide an overview of the evolution of this field since 2010 by performing a systematic mapping study considering 423 primary sources. We found six different variability facets where the AAFM is being applied that define the tendencies: product configuration and derivation; testing and evolution; reverse engineering; multi-model variability-analysis; variability modelling and variability-intensive systems. We also confirmed that there is a lack of industrial evidence in most of the cases. Finally, we present where and when the papers have been published and who are the authors and institutions that are contributing to the field. We observed that the maturity is proven by the increment in the number of journals published along the years as well as the diversity of conferences and workshops where papers are published. We also suggest some synergies with other areas such as cloud or mobile computing among others that can motivate further research in the future.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-70560-RJunta de Andalucía TIC-186

Seeding Strategies for Multi-Objective Test Case Selection: An Application on Simulation-based Testing

The time it takes software systems to be tested is usually long. This is often caused by the time it takes the entire test suite to be executed. To optimize this, regression test selection approaches have allowed for improvements to the cost-effectiveness of verification and validation activities in the software industry. In this area, multi-objective algorithms have played a key role in selecting the appropriate subset of test cases from the entire test suite. In this paper, we propose a set of seeding strategies for the test case selection problem that generate the initial population of multi-objective algorithms.We integrated these seeding strategies with an NSGA-II algorithm for solving the test case selection problem in the context of simulation-based testing. We evaluated the strategies with six case studies and a total of 21 fitness combinations for each case study (i.e., a total of 126 problems). Our evaluation suggests that these strategies are indeed helpful for solving the multi-objective test case selection problem. In fact, two of the proposed seeding strategies outperformed the NSGA-II algorithm without seeding population with statistical significance for 92.8 and 96% of the problems