The state of adoption and the challenges of systematic variability management in industry

Handling large-scale software variability is still a challenge for many organizations. After decades of research on variability management concepts, many industrial organizations have introduced techniques known from research, but still lament that pure textbook approaches are not applicable or efficient. For instance, software product line engineering—an approach to systematically develop portfolios of products—is difficult to adopt given the high upfront investments; and even when adopted, organizations are challenged by evolving their complex product lines. Consequently, the research community now mainly focuses on re-engineering and evolution techniques for product lines; yet, understanding the current state of adoption and the industrial challenges for organizations is necessary to conceive effective techniques. In this multiple-case study, we analyze the current adoption of variability management techniques in twelve medium- to large-scale industrial cases in domains such as automotive, aerospace or railway systems. We identify the current state of variability management, emphasizing the techniques and concepts they adopted. We elicit the needs and challenges expressed for these cases, triangulated with results from a literature review. We believe our results help to understand the current state of adoption and shed light on gaps to address in industrial practice.This work is supported by Vinnova Sweden, Fond Unique Interminist´eriel (FUI) France, and the Swedish Research Council. Open access funding provided by University of Gothenbur

Merging cloned alloy models with colorful refactorings

Likewise to code, clone-and-own is a common way to create variants of a model, to explore the impact of different features while exploring the design of a software system. Previously, we have introduced Colorful Alloy, an extension of the popular Alloy language and toolkit to support feature-oriented design, where model elements can be annotated with feature expressions and further highlighted with different colors to ease understanding. In this paper we propose a catalog of refactorings for Colorful Alloy models, and show how they can be used to iteratively merge cloned Alloy models into a single feature-annotated colorful model, where the commonalities and differences between the different clones are easily perceived, and more efficient aggregated analyses can be performed.This work is financed by the ERDF — European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation – COMPETE 2020 Programme and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within project PTDC/CCI-INF/29583/2017 – POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029583

Semi-Automatische Deduktion von Feature-Lokalisierung während der Softwareentwicklung: Masterarbeit

Despite extensive research on software product lines in the last decades, ad-hoc clone-and-own development is still the dominant way for introducing variability to software systems. Therefore, the same issues for which software product lines were developed in the first place are still imminent in clone-and-own development: Fixing bugs consistently throughout clones and avoiding duplicate implementation effort is extremely diffcult as similarities and differences between variants are unknown. In order to remedy this, we enhance clone-and-own development with techniques from product-line engineering for targeted variant synchronisation such that domain knowledge can be integrated stepwise and without obligation. Contrary to retroactive feature mapping recovery (e.g., mining) techniques, we infer feature-to-code mappings directly during software development when concrete domain knowledge is present. In this thesis, we focus on the first step towards targeted synchronisation between variants: the recording of feature mappings. By letting developers specify on which feature they are working on, we derive feature mappings directly during software development. We ensure syntactic validity of feature mappings and variant synchronisation by implementing disciplined annotations through abstract syntax trees. To bridge the mismatch between change classification in the implementation and abstract layer, we synthesise semantic edits on abstract syntax trees. We show that our derivation can be used to reproduce variability-related real-world code changes and compare it to the feature mapping derivation of the projectional variation control system VTS by Stanciulescu et al.Trotz umfangreicher Forschung zu Software-Produktlinien in den letzten Jahrzehnten ist Clone-and-Own immer noch der dominierende Ansatz zur Einführung von Variabilität in Softwaresystemen. Daher stehen bei Clone-and-Own immer noch die gleichen Probleme im Vordergrund, für die Software-Produktlinien überhaupt erst entwickelt wurden: Die konsistente Behebung von Fehlern in allen Klonen und die Vermeidung von doppeltem Implementierungsaufwand sind äußerst schwierig, da Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen den Varianten unbekannt sind. Um hier Abhilfe zu schaffen, erweitern wir die Clone-and-Own-Entwicklung mit Techniken aus der Produktlinien-Entwicklung zur gezielten Synchronisierung von Varianten, sodass Entwickler ihr Domänenwissen schrittweise und unverbindlich integrieren können. Im Gegensatz zu nachträglich arbeitenden Feature-Mapping-Recovery- oder auch Mining-Techniken, leiten wir Zuordungen von Features zu Quellcode direkt während der Softwareentwicklung ab, wenn konkretes Domänenwissen vorhanden ist. In dieser Arbeit entwickeln wir den ersten Schritt zur gezielten Synchronisation von Varianten: die Aufzeichnung von Feature-Mappings. Indem Entwickler spezifizieren an welchem Feature sie arbeiten, leiten wir Feature-Mappings direkt während der Softwareentwicklung ab. Wir stellen die syntaktische Korrektheit von Feature-Mappings und der Synchronisation von Varianten sicher, indem wir disziplinierte Annotationen mithilfe von abstrakten Syntaxbäumen implementieren. Um die Diskrepanz der Klassifizierung von Änderungen zwischen der Implementierungs- und der Abstraktionsschicht zu überbrücken, synthetisieren wir Semantic Edits auf abstrakten Syntaxbäumen. Wir zeigen, dass unsere Ableitung von Feature-Mappings in der Lage ist reale Codeänderungen zu reproduzieren und vergleichen sie mit der Feature-Mapping-Ableitung des Variationskontrollsystems VTS von Stanciulescu et al

An evaluation of the challenges of Multilingualism in Data Warehouse development

In this paper we discuss Business Intelligence and define what is meant by support for Multilingualism in a Business Intelligence reporting context. We identify support for Multilingualism as a challenging issue which has implications for data warehouse design and reporting performance. Data warehouses are a core component of most Business Intelligence systems and the star schema is the approach most widely used to develop data warehouses and dimensional Data Marts. We discuss the way in which Multilingualism can be supported in the Star Schema and identify that current approaches have serious limitations which include data redundancy and data manipulation, performance and maintenance issues. We propose a new approach to enable the optimal application of multilingualism in Business Intelligence. The proposed approach was found to produce satisfactory results when used in a proof-of-concept environment. Future work will include testing the approach in an enterprise environmen

The recording industry and 'regional' culture in Indonesia : the case of Minangkabau

This book explores chronologically, for the first time, the representation and redefinition of Indonesia__s regional cultures through recording media, from the introduction of the gramophone record through the current video compact disc (VCD) era, taking as case study the Minangkabau ethnic group. Based on extensive fieldwork and historical research, the author follows the Dutch East Indies colonial society__s initial encounter with recording media and the later adoption and social uses of various types of recording media among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra and its diaspora. The transformation of Minangkabau culture and identity that came with the extensive reproduction of Minangkabau cultural sounds on commercial recordings is examined. This transformation was facilitated by the West Sumatran recording industry, founded in the early 1970s along with the spread of the audio-cassette in Indonesia. The author describes the workings of the West Sumatran recording industry and how its products become the preferred medium of cultural expressions of the Minangkabau ethnic group to hold on to its identity and existence in the face of a changing world. The representations of Minangkabau culture in regional commercial recordings explored in this study demonstrate the use of recording media technology by a local society to contextualize and maintain the viability and existence of their culture and identity, whose features are changing, adaptive, and fluidUBL - phd migration 201

Migrating Java-based apo-games into a composition-based software product line

A software product line enables an organization to systematically reuse software features that allow to derive customized variants from a common platform, promising reduced development and maintenance costs. In practice, however, most organizations start to clone existing systems and only extract a software product line from such clones when the maintenance and coordination costs increase. Despite the importance of extractive software-product-line adoption, we still have only limited knowledge on what practices work best and miss datasets for evaluating automated techniques. To improve this situation, we performed an extractive adoption of the Apo-Games, resulting in a systematic analysis of fve Java games and the migration of three games into a composition-based software product line. In this paper, we report our analysis and migration process, discuss our lessons learned, and contribute a feature model as well as the implementation of the extracted software product line. Overall, the results help to gain a better understanding of problems that can appear during such migrations, indicating research opportunities and hints for practitioners. Moreover, our artifacts can serve as dataset to test automated techniques and developers may improve or extent them in the future

CURATION AND MANAGEMENT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE THROUGH LIBRARIES

Libraries, museums and archives hold valuable collections in a variety of media, presenting a vast body of knowledge rooted in the history of human civilisation. These form the repository of the wisdom of great works by thinkers of past and the present. The holdings of these institutions are priceless heritage of the mankind as they preserve documents, ideas, and the oral and written records. To value the cultural heritage and to care for it as a treasure bequeathed to us by our ancestors is the major responsibility of libraries. The past records constitute a natural resource and are indispensable to the present generation as well as to the generations to come. Libraries preserve the documentary heritage resources for which they are primarily responsible. Any loss of such materials is simply irreplaceable. Therefore, preserving this intellectual, cultural heritage becomes not only the academic commitment but also the moral responsibility of the librarians/information scientists, who are in charge of these repositories. The high quality of the papers and the discussion represent the thinking and experience of experts in their particular fields. The contributed papers also relate to the methodology used in libraries in Asia to provide access to manuscripts and cultural heritage. The volume discusses best practices in Knowledge preservation and how to collaborate and preserve the culture. The book also deals with manuscript and archives issues in the digital era. The approach of this book is concise, comprehensively, covering all major aspects of preservation and conservation through libraries. The readership of the book is not just limited to library and information science professionals, but also for those involved in conservation, preservation, restoration or other related disciplines. The book will be useful for librarians, archivists and conservators. We thank the Sunan Kalijaga University, Special Libraries Association- Asian Chapter for their trust and their constant support, all the contributors for their submissions, the members of the Local and International Committee for their reviewing effort for making this publication possible

A Machine-Verified Theory of commuting strategies for product-line reliability analysis

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Departamento de Ciência da Computação, 2019.Engenharia de linha de produtos de software é uma forma de gerenciar sistematicamente a variabilidade e a comunalidade em sistemas de software, possibilitando a síntese automática de programas relacionados (produtos) a partir de um conjunto de artefatos reutilizáveis. No entanto, o número de produtos em uma linha de produtos de software pode crescer exponencialmente em função de seu número de características. Mesmo linhas de produtos com dezenas ou centenas de opções de configuração (features) podem dar origem a milhões de produtos, tornando inviável verificar a qualidade de cada um desses produtos isoladamente. Não obstante, linhas de produtos de software crítico (por exemplo, nos domínios de aviação e sistemas médicos) necessitam garantir que seus produtos são confiáveis. Existem diversas abordagens cientes de variabilidade para análise de linha de produtos, as quais adaptam técnicas de análise de produtos isolados para lidar com variabilidade de forma eficiente. Tais abordagens podem ser classificadas em três dimensões combináveis de análise (product-based, family-based e feature-based), mas, particularmente no contexto de análise de confiabilidade, não existe uma teoria que compreenda (a) uma especificação formal das três dimensões e das estratégias de análise resultantes e (b) prova de que tais análises são equivalentes umas às outras. A falta de uma teoria com essas propriedades dificulta que se raciocine formalmente sobre o relacionamento entre as dimensões de análise e técnicas de análise derivadas. Além disso, a falta de evidência de que as diferentes estratégias são mutuamente equivalentes limita os resultados desses estudos empíricos existentes. Para ajudar a preencher essa lacuna, formalizamos sete abordagens para análise de confiabilidade em linhas de produtos, cobrindo todas as três dimensões de análise e incluindo a primeira instância de análise feature-family-product-based na literatura. Provamos que as estratégias formalizadas são corretas em relação à abordagem para análise de confiabilidade de produtos individuais, fortalecendo as comparações empíricas entre elas. Desse modo, engenheiros podem escolher a estratégia mais apropriada à linha de produtos em questão, seguros de sua corretude. Adicionalmente, apresentamos um diagrama comutativo de passos intermediários de análise, o qual relaciona estratégias diferentes e permite reusar demonstrações de corretude entre elas. Essa visão contribui para uma compreensão mais abrangente sobre os princípios subjacentes às estratégias, o que visualiza-se poder ajudar outros pesquisadores a alçar técnicas de análise de software para abordagens cientes de variabilidade ainda inexploradas. Além disso, reduzimos o risco de erro humano por meio da mecanização da teoria resultante no provador interativo de teoremas chamado PVS (Prototype Verification System). Como resultado do esforço de mecanização, identificamos erros e imprecisões na versão manualmente especificada de nossa teoria, os quais foram consequentemente corrigidos. Portanto, documentamos as lições aprendidas com o esforço de mecanização e apresentamos uma teoria verificada por máquina potencialmente reutilizável.Software product line engineering is a means to systematically manage variability and commonality in software systems, enabling the automated synthesis of related programs (products) from a set of reusable assets. However, the number of products in a software product line may grow exponentially with the number of features, so it is practically infeasible to quality-check each of these products in isolation. Nonetheless, product lines of safety-critical software (e.g., in the domains of avionics and medical systems) need to ensure that its products are reliable. There are a number of variability-aware approaches to product-line analysis that adapt single-product analysis techniques to cope with variability in an efficient way. Such approaches can be classified along three composable analysis dimensions (product-based, family-based, and feature-based), but, particularly in the context of reliability analysis, there is no theory comprising both (a) a formal specification of the three dimensions and resulting analysis strategies and (b) proof that such analyses are equivalent to one another. The lack of such a theory hinders formal reasoning on the relationship between the analysis dimensions and derived analysis techniques. Moreover, as long as there is no evidence that the different examined strategies are mutually equivalent, the existing empirical studies comparing them will have limited results. To address this issue, we formalize seven approaches to user-oriented reliability analysis of product lines, covering all three analysis dimensions and including the first instance of a feature-family-product-based analysis in the literature. We prove the formalized analysis strategies to be sound with respect to reliability analysis of a single product, thereby strengthening the existing empirical comparison between them. Furthermore, we present a commuting diagram of intermediate analysis steps, which relates different strategies and enables the reuse of soundness proofs between them. Such view contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of underlying principles used in these strategies, which we envision could help other researchers to lift existing single-product analysis techniques to yet under-explored variability-aware approaches. Additionally, we reduce the risk of human error by mechanizing the resulting theory in the PVS interactive theorem prover. As a result, we identified and corrected errors and imprecisions of the handcrafted version. Hence, we document lessons learned throughout the mechanization process and provide a potentially reusable machine-verified theory

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history