73,526 research outputs found
Simplifying the analysis of software design variants with a colorful alloy
Formal modeling and automatic analysis are essential to achieve a trustworthy software design prior to its implementation. Alloy and its Analyzer are a popular language and tool for this task. Frequently, rather than a single software artifact, the goal is to develop a full software product line (SPL) with many variants supporting different features. Ideally, software design languages and tools should provide support for analyzing all such variants (e.g., by helping pinpoint combinations of features that could break a property), but that is not currently the case. Even when developing a single artifact, support for multi-variant analysis is desirable to explore design alternatives. Several techniques have been proposed to simplify the implementation of SPLs. One such technique is to use background colors to identify the fragments of code associated with each feature. In this paper we propose to use that same technique for formal design, showing how to add support for features and background colors to Alloy and its Analyzer, thus easing the analysis of software design variants. Some illustrative examples and evaluation results are presented, showing the benefits and efficiency of the implemented technique.This work is financed by the ERDF - European Regional Development Fund - through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 - and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project POCI-01-
0145-FEDER-016826. The third author was also supported by the FCT sabbatical grant with reference SFRH/BSAB/143106/2018
Context for goal-level product line derivation
Product line engineering aims at developing a family of products and facilitating the derivation of product variants from it. Context can be a main factor in determining what products to derive. Yet, there is gap in incorporating context with variability models. We advocate that, in the first place, variability originates from human intentions and choices even before software systems are constructed, and context influences variability at this intentional level before the functional one. Thus, we propose to analyze variability at an early phase of analysis adopting the intentional ontology of goal models, and studying how context can influence such variability. Below we present a classification of variation points on goal models, analyze their relation with context, and show the process of constructing and maintaining the models. Our approach is illustrated with an example of a smarthome for people with dementia problems. 1
Incremental Consistency Checking in Delta-oriented UML-Models for Automation Systems
Automation systems exist in many variants and may evolve over time in order
to deal with different environment contexts or to fulfill changing customer
requirements. This induces an increased complexity during design-time as well
as tedious maintenance efforts. We already proposed a multi-perspective
modeling approach to improve the development of such systems. It operates on
different levels of abstraction by using well-known UML-models with activity,
composite structure and state chart models. Each perspective was enriched with
delta modeling to manage variability and evolution. As an extension, we now
focus on the development of an efficient consistency checking method at several
levels to ensure valid variants of the automation system. Consistency checking
must be provided for each perspective in isolation, in-between the perspectives
as well as after the application of a delta.Comment: In Proceedings FMSPLE 2016, arXiv:1603.0857
Evaluation of Variability Concepts for Simulink in the Automotive Domain
Modeling variability in Matlab/Simulink becomes more and more important. We
took the two variability modeling concepts already included in Matlab/Simulink
and our own one and evaluated them to find out which one is suited best for
modeling variability in the automotive domain. We conducted a controlled
experiment with developers at Volkswagen AG to decide which concept is
preferred by developers and if their preference aligns with measurable
performance factors. We found out that all existing concepts are viable
approaches and that the delta approach is both the preferred concept as well as
the objectively most efficient one, which makes Delta-Simulink a good solution
to model variability in the automotive domain.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 6 tables, Proceedings of 48th Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), pp. 5373-5382, Kauai,
Hawaii, USA, IEEE Computer Society, 201
Using Feature Models for Distributed Deployment in Extended Smart Home Architecture
Nowadays, smart home is extended beyond the house itself to encompass
connected platforms on the Cloud as well as mobile personal devices. This Smart
Home Extended Architecture (SHEA) helps customers to remain in touch with their
home everywhere and any time. The endless increase of connected devices in the
home and outside within the SHEA multiplies the deployment possibilities for
any application. Therefore, SHEA should be taken from now as the actual target
platform for smart home application deployment. Every home is different and
applications offer different services according to customer preferences. To
manage this variability, we extend the feature modeling from software product
line domain with deployment constraints and we present an example of a model
that could address this deployment challenge
Supporting the automated generation of modular product line safety cases
Abstract The effective reuse of design assets in safety-critical Software Product Lines (SPL) would require the reuse of safety analyses of those assets in the variant contexts of certification of products derived from the SPL. This in turn requires the traceability of SPL variation across design, including variation in safety analysis and safety cases. In this paper, we propose a method and tool to support the automatic generation of modular SPL safety case architectures from the information provided by SPL feature modeling and model-based safety analysis. The Goal Structuring Notation (GSN) safety case modeling notation and its modular extensions supported by the D-Case Editor were used to implement the method in an automated tool support. The tool was used to generate a modular safety case for an automotive Hybrid Braking System SPL
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