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

Implementation issues in product line scoping

Often product line engineering is treated similar to the waterfall model in traditional software engineering, i.e., the different phases (scoping, analysis, architecting, implementation) are treated as if they could be clearly separated and would follow each other in an ordered fashion. However, in practice strong interactions between the individual phases become apparent. In particular, how implementation is done has a strong impact on economic aspects of the project and thus how to adequately plan it. Hence, assessing these relationships adequately in the beginning has a strong impact on performing a product line project right. In this paper we present a framework that helps in exactly this task. It captures on an abstract level the relationships between scoping information and implementation aspects and thus allows to provide rough guidance on implementation aspects of the project. We will also discuss the application of our framework to a specific industrial project

Using ERP as a basis for Enterprise application integration

Architecting and implementing e-Business supply chain solutions across and within the modern day enterprise, is now becoming a necessity in order to maintain competitive and be adaptable to market needs. As such, the integration of information and processes is a vital step, using technologies such as using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and enterprise portal platforms. The effective sharing of resource planning and other enterprise related data across and within the enterprise is typically seen as a facet of a business to business (B2B) platform. However, such infrastructures typically involve a tight integration across intra and inter-organisational systems. This paper examines an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) initiative taken by a global manufacturer of industrial automation products, which attempted to utilise ERP as an integration tool across its internal B2B infrastructure, to achieve such an aim. This paper discusses those integration considerations and complexities, experienced by the case company upon embarking on an EAI integration programme through the adoption of a core ERP as a catalyst for organizational change. In doing so the authors present an analysis of the inherent risks and limitations of this approach in terms of previously published literature in the field, relating to technology-driven organizational change and EAI impact and adoption frameworks

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

Current issue in corporate waqf in Malaysia

Corporate waqf is still new for the contemporary Islamic studies in Malaysia. There are limited resources and guidance to explain about corporate waqf. The purposes of this study are to explore the issues, concept and development of corporate waqf. Current structure for corporate waqf also being explored as part of case studies. This paper provides several perspectives and suggestions to this issue. The methodology for this study is secondary data approach by using the data analysis from the related journal and paper. The subject for this study is Selangor Muamalat. This paper come out with the concept and development of the contemporary waqf focused on corporate waqf and there are five current issues identified in the contemporary waqf. Next, seven proposed action plans are suggested to cover the issues. Lastly, the structure of Selangor Muamalat is analyses by focusing on the management structure, financial and operational framework and the Shariah consideration towards Selangor Muamalat structure

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

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse