Investigating Inconsistency Detection as a Validation Operation in Software Product Line

Software Product Line (SPL) is a new methodology that develops software products by configuring a software product from artifacts repository. Variability is one of the important issues in designing SPL. It reflects the diversity and commonality of the artifacts in a product line. The success of SPL is basically dependent on model's variability. SPL contains three main issues: variability modeling, configuration of new software and the analysis of SPL. Validation is a vital operation among all these issues. In the literature, many methods of modeling variability are proposed but none of them focuses on the validation. In this paper, an intelligent method for validating SPL is introduced. The proposed method is based on two layers. The higher layer is a graphical representation (satisfying visualization condition), and the lower layer is logical representation of the variability using first order logic (FOL). The way that the proposed method can be used to model variability, and support the analysis and validation of SPL is described. Later a new operation in SPL validation issue is presented. Finally, the implementation of the two basic operations in the analysis of SPL is illustrated.

A medium‐sized domain‐engineering process can contain thousands of features that all have constraint dependency rules between them. Therefore, the validation of the content of domain‐engineering process is vital to produce high‐quality software products. However, it is not feasible to do this manually. This paper aims to improve the quality of the software products generated by the domain‐engineering process by ensuring the validity of the results of that process. We propose rules for two operations: inconsistency detection and inconsistency prevention. We introduce first‐order logic (FOL) rules to detect three types of inconsistency and prevent the direct inconsistency in the domain‐engineering process. Developing FOL rules to detect and prevent inconsistency in the domain‐engineering process directly without the need to the configuration process is our main contribution. We performed some experiments to test the scalability and applicability of our approach on domain‐engineered software product lines containing 1000 assets to 20000 assets. The results show that our approach is scalable and could be utilized to improve the domain‐engineering process.

Software product family or line is a software engineering paradigm that systematizes reuse. In software product line engineering, two phases are distinguished: domain engineering which is in charge of developing a common infrastructure and assets and application engineering which makes use of those assets to generate the products. One of the key aspects of product lines is variability and its management. However, the main focus has been on functional variability and quality variability in software product lines has not received so much attention by researchers. In a product line different members of the line may require different levels of a quality requirement, for instance they could differ in terms of their availability, security, reliability, etc. Due to this variability, quality evaluation in software product lines is much more complicated that in single-systems. One alternative is to evaluate all the products of a line but it is very expensive and ways of reducing evaluation efforts are necessary. In this direction, the paper presents a method for facilitating cost-effective quality evaluation of a product line taking into consideration variability on quality attributes.

A software product line (SPL) usually involves a shared set of core assets and a series of application products. To ensure consistency, the evolution of the core assets and all the application products should be coordinated and synchronized under a unified evolution process. Therefore, SPL evolution often involves cross-product propagation and synchronization besides application derivation based on core assets, presenting quite different characteristic from the evolution of individual software products. As software architectures, including the product line architecture (PLA) and application architectures, play a central role in SPL engineering and evolution, architecture-based evolution analysis is a natural way for analyzing and managing SPL evolution. In this paper, we explore common practices of architecture evolution and the rationale behind in industrial SPL development. To this end, we conduct a case study with Wingsoft examination system product line (WES-PL), an industrial product line with an evolution history of eight years and more than 10 application products. In the case study, we reviewed the evolution history of WES-PL architecture and analyzed several typical evolution cases. Based on the historical analysis, we identify some special problems in industrial SPL practice from the aspect of architecture evolution and summarize some useful experiences about SPL evolution decisions to complement classical SPL methodology. On the other hand, we also propose some possible improvements for the evolution management in WES-PL.

Managing the business of software product line: An empirical investigation of key business factors

Software product line (SPL) is a software engineering paradigm for software development. A software product within a product line often has specific functionalities that are not common to all other products within the product line. Those specific functionalities are termed “variant features” in a product line. SPL paradigm involves the modeling of variant features. However, little work in SPL investigates and addresses the modeling of variant features specific to user interface (UI). Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the de facto modeling language for object-oriented software systems. It is known that UML needs better support in modeling UIs. Thus, much research developed UML extensions to improve UML support in modeling UIs. Yet little of this work is related to developing such extensions for modeling UIs for SPLs in which variant features specific to UI modeling must be addressed. This research develops a UML extension -Web User Interface Modeling Language (WUIML) to address these problems. WUIML defines elements for modeling variant features specific to user interfaces for Web-based SPLs. The model elements in WUIML extend from the metaclass and BasicActivity of the UML2.0 metamodel. WUIML integrates the modeling of variant features specific to user interfaces to UML. For example, in a Web-based patient registration software product line, member products targeting British users may use British date format in the user interface, while member products targeting United States users may use United States date format in the user interface. Thus, this is a variant feature for this product line. WUIML defines a model element, XOR, to represent such exclusive or conditions in a product line user interface model. WUIML would reduce SPL engineers’ efforts needed in UI development. To validate the WUIML research outcome, a case study was conducted. The results of this empirical study indicate that modeling UIs for Web-based SPLs using WUIML is more effective and efficient than using standard UML.

Context: Successful software systems continuously evolve to accommodate feature requests of a diverse customer-base. At some point during this evolution, the variety of customer needs and increased system complexity suggests the consideration of a software product line (SPL).Aim: The goal of this research is to support the decision maker facing the enhancement of an evolving software system (ESS) by determining the most appropriate product line design (out of a given set of candidate SPL portfolios) to minimize the technical risk and maximize the business value.Method: The proposed method called OPTESS is aimed at finding an evolution plan for the ESS which optimizes both the given technical and business objectives. Business analysis using a value-based pricing mechanism is applied to a set of initially proposed SPL portfolios (for enhancing the ESS) such that profit is maximized. Technical analysis is applied to the same initially proposed SPL portfolios to minimize the risk of failure of ESS due to implementation of new features. Business and technical analyses improve the performance of solutions for their respective objectives by modifying the feature sets of candidate SPL portfolios. OPTESS helps the decision maker select a plan for enhancement of an ESS by performing trade- off analysis between economic and technical objectives.Results: The method was initially evaluated through a case study for a set of 9 new candidate features to be added to an open source text editing system called jEdit. OPTESS helped the decision maker to identify 3 non-dominated solutions judged to be the best contenders for addition when considering both technical and economic criteria.

BackgroundThe software product lines (SPL) enable development teams to fully address a systematic reuse of shared assets to deliver a family of similar software products. Mobile applications are an obvious candidate for employing an SPL approach. This paper presents our research outcomes, based on empirical data from an industry-level development project. Two development teams were confronted with the same functionalities set to be delivered through a family of native mobile applications for Android and iOS.MethodsEmpirical data was gathered before, during and after a year of full-time development. The data demonstrate the impact of a SPL approach by comparing the SPL and non-SPL multiple edition development. One family of products (Android apps) was developed using an SPL approach, while another (iOS apps), functionally the same, was developed without employing an SPL approach. The project generated a volume of raw and aggregated empirical data to support our research questions.ResultsThe paper reports a positive impact of an SPL approach on product quality (internal and external) and feature output per week. As data shows, it also increases the delivery of functionalities (240% in 6 more editions), while investing the same amount of effort needed for a single-edition development. As a result of system-supported separation of development and production code, developers had a high confidence in further development. On the other hand, the second team delivered less new functionalities, only two new application editions, and lower software quality than the team that manages multi-edition development by employing an SPL approach.

At the heart of product line development is the assumption that through structured reuse later products will be of a higher quality and require less time and effort to develop and test. This thesis presents empirical results from two case studies aimed at assessing the quality aspect of this claim and exploring fault prediction in the context of software product lines. The first case study examines pre-release faults and change proneness of four products in PolyFlow, a medium-sized, industrial software product line; the second case study analyzes post-release faults using pre-release data over seven releases of four products in Eclipse, a very large, open source software product line.;The goals of our research are (1) to determine the association between various software metrics, as well as their correlation with the number of faults at the component/package level; (2) to characterize the fault and change proneness of components/packages at various levels of reuse; (3) to explore the benefits of the structured reuse found in software product lines; and (4) to evaluate the effectiveness of predictive models, built on a variety of products in a software product line, to make accurate predictions of pre-release software faults (in the case of PolyFlow) and post-release software faults (in the case of Eclipse).;The research results of both studies confirm, in a software product line setting, the findings of others that faults (both pre- and post-release) are more highly correlated to change metrics than to static code metrics, and are mostly contained in a small set of components/ packages. The longitudinal aspect of our research indicates that new products do benefit from the development and testing of previous products. The results also indicate that pre-existing components/packages, including the common components/packages, undergo continuous change, but tend to sustain low fault densities. However, this is not always true for newly developed components/packages. Finally, the results also show that predictions of pre-release faults in the case of PolyFlow and post-release faults in the case of Eclipse can be done accurately from pre-release data, and furthermore, that these predictions benefit from information about additional products in the software product lines.

Many organizations report dramatic benefits from the adoption of software product line practice. Organizations that have established software engineering process discipline are better poised to succeed with product lines. While we acknowledge that there are different paths to successful process discipline, in this technical note, we concentrate on approaches based on the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) models. We describe practices that are most crucial to product line success. While some of these relate directly to the CMMI models process areas, others are uniquely important to product lines. In this technical note, we first present fundamental concepts of software product lines. We then describe important product line practices as they have been documented in A Framework for Software Product Line Practice (framework). We next present an overview of the CMMI models, followed by a description of the general relationships between the framework and CMMI models. We amplify this comparison with a detailed example showing the relationship between configuration management practices in CMMI and in the framework. We conclude by describing the ways in which organizations can build upon their process improvement efforts to achieve success with product lines and realize additional benefits through the use of both technologies.

The quality assurance of software product lines (SPL) achieved via testing is a crucial and challenging activity of SPL engineering. In general, the application of single-software testing techniques for SPL testing is not practical as it leads to the individual testing of a potentially vast number of variants. Testing each variant in isolation further results in redundant testing processes by means of redundant test-case executions due to the shared commonality. Existing techniques for SPL testing cope with those challenges, e.g., by identifying samples of variants to be tested. However, each variant is still tested separately without taking the explicit knowledge about the shared commonality and variability into account to reduce the overall testing effort. Furthermore, due to the increasing longevity of software systems, their development has to face software evolution. Hence, quality assurance has also to be ensured after SPL evolution by testing respective versions of variants. In this thesis, we tackle the challenges of testing redundancy as well as evolution by proposing a framework for model-based regression testing of evolving SPLs. The framework facilitates efficient incremental testing of variants and versions of variants by exploiting the commonality and reuse potential of test artifacts and test results. Our contribution is divided into three parts. First, we propose a test-modeling formalism capturing the variability and version information of evolving SPLs in an integrated fashion. The formalism builds the basis for automatic derivation of reusable test cases and for the application of change impact analysis to guide retest test selection. Second, we introduce two techniques for incremental change impact analysis to identify (1) changing execution dependencies to be retested between subsequently tested variants and versions of variants, and (2) the impact of an evolution step to the variant set in terms of modified, new and unchanged versions of variants. Third, we define a coverage-driven retest test selection based on a new retest coverage criterion that incorporates the results of the change impact analysis. The retest test selection facilitates the reduction of redundantly executed test cases during incremental testing of variants and versions of variants. The framework is prototypically implemented and evaluated by means of three evolving SPLs showing that it achieves a reduction of the overall effort for testing evolving SPLs.

A Software Product Line (SPL) is a set of systems that share a group of manageable features and satisfy the specific needs of a particular domain. The features of an SPL can be used in variable combinations to derive product variants in the SPL domain. Because SPLs promote product development through reuse, it is vital to have a means to measure their quality in terms of quality attributes like complexity, reusability,… In this paper, we propose a set of metrics to evaluate the quality of an SPL at three levels: the feature model, design and code. We adapted a set of metrics for software quality and defined new metrics to deal with the inherent characteristics of SPLs, specifically the feature model and the traceability between features, design and code. Furthermore, to assist in interpreting the quality of a given SPL, we conducted an empirical study over ten open source SPLs to identify thresholds for the proposed metrics.

Product Derivation represents one of the main challenges that Software Product Line (SPL) faces. Deriving individual products from shared software assets is a time-consuming and an expensive activity. In this paper, we (1) present an MDE approach for engineering SPL and (2) propose to leverage model-to-model transformations (MMT) and model-to-text (MTT) transformations for supporting both domain engineering and application engineering processes. In this work, we use ATL as a model-to-model transformation language and Acceleo as a model-to-text transformation language.The proposed approach is discussed with e-Health product line applications.

Software Product Lines (SPL) adoption can affect several aspects of an organization and it involves significant investment and risk. This way, SPL risk management is a crucial activity of SPL adoption. This study aims to identify SPL risks during the scoping and requirement disciplines to provide information to better understand risk management in SPL. In order to achieve the previous stated goal, a case study research was applied in an industrial project in the medical information management domain. Using the captured risks, a classification scheme was built and risk mitigation strategies were identified. We spent five months, totaling 79 hours, performing risk management (RM) in the scoping discipline and twelve months, totaling 148 hours, performing RM on the requirements discipline. We identified 32 risks during the scoping discipline and 20 risks during the requirements discipline, 14 risks occurred in both disciplines. Some identified risks are not particular to SPL development, however, they have their impact increased due to the SPL characteristic. All the study results and lessons learned are useful for all project managers and researchers who are considering the introduction of SPL risk management in industry or academia.

A systematic mapping study on software product line evolution: From legacy system reengineering to product line refactoring