Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development - FOSD '12

Abstract

Feature orientation is an emerging paradigm of software development. It supports the largely automatic generation of large software systems from a set of units of functionality called features. The key idea of feature-oriented software development (FOSD) is to emphasize the similarities of a family of software systems for a given application domain (e.g., database systems, banking software, text processing systems) with the goal of reusing software artifacts among the family members. Features distinguish different members of the family. A challenge in FOSD is that a feature does not map cleanly to an isolated module of code. Rather it may affect ("cut across") many components and documents of a software system. Research on FOSD has shown that the concept of features pervades all phases of the software life cycle and requires a proper treatment in terms of analysis, design, and programming techniques, methods, languages, and tools, as well as formalisms and theory. The primary goal of the 4th International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development is to foster and strengthen the collaboration between the researchers who work in the field of FOSD or in the related fields of software product lines, service-oriented architecture, model-driven engineering and feature interactions. The focus of FOSD'12 will be on discussions, rather than on presenting technical content only. Both workshop days start with a keynote by leading researchers in FOSD. Mira Mezini will talk about programming language concepts for FOSD and Salvador Trujillo is going to share experiences in applying FOSD to offshore wind power and railways. These keynotes will be an excellent start up for discussions on historical perspectives, current issues, and visions of FOSD.