Towards Feature-Oriented Variability Reconfiguration in Dynamic Software Product Lines

Abstract

Abstract. Dynamic Software Product Line (DSPL) provides a new paradigm for developing self-adaptive systems with the principles of software product line engineering. DSPL emphasizes variability analysis and design at development time and variability binding and reconfiguration at runtime, thus requires some kinds of variability mechanisms to map high-level variations (usually represented by features) to low-level implementation and support runtime reconfiguration. Existing work on DSPL usually assumes that variation features can be directly mapped to coarse-grained elements like services, components or plug-ins, making the methods hard to be applied for traditional software systems. In this paper, we propose a feature-oriented method to support runtime variability reconfiguration in DSPLs. The method introduces the concept of role model, an intermediate level between feature variations and implementations to improve their traceability. On the other hand, the method involves a reference implementation framework based on dynamic aspect mechanisms to implement the runtime reconfiguration. We illustrate the process of applying the proposed method with a concrete case study, which helps to validate the effectiveness of our method.

Supervisory Control for Dynamic Feature Configuration in Product Lines

“…In [21], a feature-oriented method is proposed to support runtime variability reconfiguration by introducing an intermediate level between feature variations and implementations.…”

Systematic scalability assessment for feature oriented multi-tenant services

“…DSPLs ( Hallsteinsen et al, 2008;Istoan et al, 2009;Hinchey et al, 2012;Rosenmüller et al, 2011 ) produce software that is capable of dynamically adapting its behavior to changes in user requirements, resource constraints, adverse conditions, etc. This dynamism means that the configuration of features can vary at runtime several times during the whole life cycle of the product ( Shen et al, 2011;Apel et al, 2013;Mietzner et al, 2009 ).…”

Composition and Self-Adaptation of Service-Based Systems with Feature Models

“…We use the feature models to find a new matching, regarding the features that may suit a certain context. If the family discovery process finds the service family with the adequate feature for the context, a new valid configuration of that family containing this feature is automatically created by our feature modeling tool, Hydra 7 . We want to highlight the new configuration is valid, so, both tree and cross-tree constraints specifying restrictions between the components and context are satisfied.…”

“…Thus, we use feature models to represent the variability of the services and to enable the service composition to dynamically reconfigure them when needed taking the context changes into account. To this end, we make use of Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPLs) [6,7], an emerging field that produces families of software products capable of adapting to requirements that change at runtime. Following this paradigm, the service composition will be performed by selecting, at runtime, a specific configuration of the service family adapted to the context requirements.…”