SPLTea 2015: Second International Workshop on Software Product Line Teaching

International audienceEducation has a key role to play for disseminating the constantly growing body of Software Product Line (SPL) knowledge. Teaching SPLs is challenging; it is unclear, for example , how SPLs can be taught and what is the material available. This workshop aims to explore and explain the current status and ongoing work on teaching SPLs at universities, colleges, and in industry (e.g., by consultants). This second edition will continue the effort made at SPLTea'14. In particular we seek to design and populate an open repository of resources dedicated to SPL teaching

Using Constraint Programming to Verify DOPLER Variability Models

Software product lines are typically developed using model-based approaches. Models are used to guide and automate key activities such as the derivation of products. The verification of product line models is thus essential to ensure the consistency of the derived products. While many authors have proposed approaches for verifying feature models there is so far no such approach for decision models. We discuss challenges of analyzing and verifying decision-oriented DOPLER variability models. The manual verification of these models is an error-prone, tedious, and sometimes infeasible task. We present a preliminary approach that converts DOPLER variability models into constraint programs to support their verification. We assess the feasibility of our approach by identifying defects in two existing variability models

CASE Tool support for variability management in software product lines

Software product lines (SPL) aim at reducing time-to-market and increasing software quality through extensive, planned reuse of artifacts. An essential activity in SPL is variability management, i.e., defining and managing commonality and variability among member products. Due to the large scale and complexity of today’s software-intensive systems, variability management has become increasingly complex to conduct. Accordingly, tool support for variability management has been gathering increasing momentum over the last few years and can be considered a key success factor for developing and maintaining SPLs. While several studies have already been conducted on variability management, none of these analyzed the available tool support in detail. In this work, we report on a survey in which we analyzed 37 existing variability management tools identified using a systematic literature review to understand the tools’ characteristics, maturity, and the challenges in the field. We conclude that while most studies on variability management tools provide a good motivation and description of the research context and challenges, they often lack empirical data to support their claims and findings. It was also found that quality attributes important for the practical use of tools such as usability, integration, scalability, and performance were out of scope for most studies

Supporting distributed product configuration by integrating heterogeneous variability modeling approaches

Context In industrial settings products are developed by more than one organization. Software vendors and suppliers commonly typically maintain their own product lines, which contribute to a larger (multi) product line or software ecosystem. It is unrealistic to assume that the participating organizations will agree on using a specific variability modeling technique—they will rather use different approaches and tools to manage the variability of their systems. Objective We aim to support product configuration in software ecosystems based on several variability models with different semantics that have been created using different notations. Method We present an integrative approach that provides a unified perspective to users configuring products in multi product line environments, regardless of the different modeling methods and tools used internally. We also present a technical infrastructure and a prototype implementation based on web services. Results We show the feasibility of the approach and its implementation by using it with the three most widespread types of variability modeling approaches in the product line community, i.e., feature-based, OVM-style, and decision-oriented modeling. To demonstrate the feasibility and flexibility of our approach, we present an example derived from industrial experience in enterprise resource planning. We further applied the approach to support the configuration of privacy settings in the Android ecosystem based on multiple variability models. We also evaluated the performance of different model enactment strategies used in our approach. Conclusions Tools and techniques allowing stakeholders to handle variability in a uniform manner can considerably foster the initiation and growth of software ecosystems from the perspective of software reuse and configuration.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012-32273Junta de Andalucía TIC-186

Evolution in Dynamic Software Product Lines

International audienceMany software systems today provide support for adaptation and reconfiguration at runtime, in response to changes in their environment. Such adaptive systems are designed to run continuously and may not be shut down for reconfiguration or maintenance tasks. The variability of such systems has to be explicitly managed, together with mechanisms that control their runtime adaptation and reconfiguration. Dynamic software product lines (DSPLs) can help to achieve this. However, dealing with evolution is particularly challenging in a DSPL, as changes made at run-time can easily lead to inconsistencies. This paper describes the challenges of evolving DSPLs using an example cyber-physical system for home automation. We discuss the shortcomings of existing work and present a reference architecture to support DSPL evolution. To demonstrate its feasibility and flexibility, we implemented the proposed reference architecture for two different DSPLs: the aforementioned cyber-physical system, which uses feature models to describe its variability, and a runtime monitoring infrastructure, which is based on decision models. To assess the industrial applicability of our approach, we also implemented the reference architecture for a real-world DSPL, an automation software system for injection molding machines. Our results provide evidence on the flexibility, performance and industrial applicability of our approach

First international workshop on Multi Product Line Engineering (MultiPLE 2013)

In an industrial context, software systems are rarely developed by a single organization. For software product lines, this means that various organizations collaborate to provide and integrate the assets used in a product line. It is not uncommon that these assets themselves are built as product lines, a practice which is referred to as multi product lines. This cross-organizational distribution of reusable assets leads to numerous challenges, such as inconsistent configuration, costly and time-consuming integration, diverging evolution speed and direction, and inadequate testing. The MultiPLE workshop is aimed at discussing the challenges involved with the development and evolution of multi product lines and the assets used for their production. © 2013 Authors

A framework for variable content document generation with multiple actors

“NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Information and Software Technology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Information and Software Technology, Volume 56, Issue 9, September 2014, Pages 1101–1121 DOI10.1016/j.infsof.2013.12.006Context - Advances in customization have highlighted the need for tools supporting variable content document management and generation in many domains. Current tools allow the generation of highly customized documents that are variable in both content and layout. However, most frameworks are technology-oriented, and their use requires advanced skills in implementation-related tools, which means their use by end users (i.e. document designers) is severely limited. Objective - Starting from past and current trends for customized document authoring, our goal is to provide a document generation alternative in which variants are specified at a high level of abstraction and content reuse can be maximized in high variability scenarios. Method Based on our experience in Document Engineering, we identified areas in the variable content document management and generation field open to further improvement. We first classified the primary sources of variability in document composition processes and then developed a methodology, which we called DPL based on Software Product Lines principles to support document generation in high variability scenarios. Results - In order to validate the applicability of our methodology we implemented a tool DPLfw to carry out DPL processes. After using this in different scenarios, we compared our proposal with other state-of-the-art tools for variable content document management and generation. Conclusion - The DPLfw showed a good capacity for the automatic generation of variable content documents equal to or in some cases surpassing other currently available approaches. To the best of our knowledge, DPLfw is the only framework that combines variable content and document workflow facilities, easing the generation of variable content documents in which multiple actors play different roles.This work has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad under Grant TIPEx (TIN2010-19859-C03-03).Gómez Llana, A.; Penadés Gramage, MC.; Canos Cerda, JH.; Borges, MR.; Llavador Campos, M. (2014). A framework for variable content document generation with multiple actors. Information and Software Technology. 56(9):1101-1121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2013.12.006S1101112156

Software diversity: state of the art and perspectives

International audienceDiversity is prevalent in modern software systems to facilitate adapting the software to customer requirements or the execution environment. Diversity has an impact on all phases of the software development process. Appropriate means and organizational structures are required to deal with the additional complexity introduced by software variability. This introductory article to the special section "Software Diversity--Modeling, Analysis and Evolution" provides an overview of the current state of the art in diverse systems development and discusses challenges and potential solutions. The article covers requirements analysis, design, implementation, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution as well as organizational aspects. It also provides an overview of the articles which are part of this special section and addresses particular issues of diverse systems development