Criteria for Comparing Requirements Variability Modeling Notations for Product Lines

Abstract

Software product families have proven to be an effective approach to reuse in software development.For planning requirements reuse, several variability approaches are developed.This study is made in an industrial company producing blood analysis automatons. It aims at finding the most suitable notation to model requirements variability for the product line developed by the company.The paper provides a comparative survey on feature-based notations for requirements variability modeling. It introduces an evaluation framework based on criteria that are derived by studying the main engineers' expectations for such a notation. The evaluation is fulfilled by making out notations' metamodels. The use of these languages is systematically illustrated with the same example, adapted from the company context, in order to refine the notation selection approach. Finally, recommendations are done, and issues on making the approach systematic are discussed.

Comprehending Feature Models Expressed in CVL

“…and (3) succinctness: how big are the expressions of one and the same semantic object? Djebbi and Salinesi [11] provided a comparative survey on four feature diagram languages for requirements variability modeling. The languages are compared according to a list of criteria that includes readability, simplicity and expressiveness, type distinction, documentation, dependencies, evolution, adaptability, scalability, support, unification, and standardizeability.…”

A vision for generic concern-oriented requirements reuse^re@21

“…Hence, 48 publications [103]- [150] are deemed out of scope but have been included in the "from survey -not relevant" section of the bibliography for traceability and repeatability reasons. For example, publications reporting on a comparative evaluation of four feature modeling notations [121] or on tool support for matrix-based feature modeling [127] are out of scope because reuse is only mentioned in general sentences on SPLs or feature models being reuse approaches/techniques and the actual content does not address requirements reuse. Similarly, publications on the reuse process are also out of scope (e.g., [111][119]).…”

Evaluating Comprehension and Utilization of Variability Aspects in UML-Based Models

“…Although this method was selected after a careful examination of different UML-based methods (see the resultant mapping in Table 2), comparative analysis needs to be done in order to check the comprehension and utilization capabilities of different methods in this category. Such analysis can be done by defining a set of criteria, similar to the ones listed, for example, in [ 10] and [ 16], and examining how the different methods satisfy these criteria. Complementarily, this analysis can use comparative empirical evaluation techniques, involving several UML-based methods.…”