Product Line Engineering Approach Research Articles

Identifying Reusable Core Assets of Digital Health Apps.

We aim to identify and model reusable core assets to facilitate the development of a number of similar, but adapted DHAs in the context of an initial product line engineering approach. To identify core assets, we apply a systematic analysis of six exemplary state-of-the-art DHAs. In an iterative process, they were modeled in a feature model. We identified 14 core assets of DHAs out of which six are mandatory (i.e. required by each DHA) and eight are optional core assets (i.e. required by most DHAs, depending on the app complexity). We found that DHAs share common functionalities that could contribute to a more efficient development of the DHA, especially in terms of time and cost savings.

E-Business Software Product Line Methodology Based on SMEs Characteristics

The growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) will certainly have a positive influence on economic development in a country. However, many SMEs struggle to survive, grow, and show limited productivity. It was recorded that there were around 63.9% of SMEs in Indonesia whose turnover had decreased by more than 30% during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the factors that cause the low survival rate of SMEs, a factor that is considered critical is the lack of success in the use of e-business. The use of e-business by SMEs is not a one-size-fits-all solution, because SMEs have various characteristics. In this study, an E-Business Software Product Line Methodology based on SMEs characteristics was proposed using Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) approach. In general, the proposed methodology was sufficient to describe the aspects needed in building a software development methodology. Aspects that had not been described were those related to software project management. The proposed methodology is useful for building an e-business application platform that can be customized based on SMEs characteristics.

Properties of a Feature in Code-Assets: An Exploratory Study

Software product line engineering is a paradigm for developing a family of software products from a repository of reusable assets rather than developing each individual product from scratch. In featureoriented software product line engineering, the common and the variable characteristics of the products are expressed in terms of features. Using software product line engineering approach, software products are produced en masse by means of two engineering phases: (i) Domain Engineering and, (ii) Application Engineering. At the domain engineering phase, reusable assets are developed with variation points where variant features may be bound for each of the diverse products. At the application engineering phase, individual and customized products are developed from the reusable assets. Ideally, the reusable assets should be adaptable with less effort to support additional variations (features) that were not planned beforehand in order to increase the usage context of SPL as a result of expanding markets or when a new usage context of software product line emerges. This paper presents an exploration research to investigate the properties of features, in the code-asset implemented using Object-Oriented Programming Style. In the exploration, we observed that program elements of disparate features formed unions as well as intersections that may affect modifiability of the code-assets. The implication of this research to practice is that an unstable product line and with the tendency of emerging variations should aim for techniques that limit the number of intersections between program elements of different features. Similarly, the implication of the observation to research is that there should be subsequent investigations using multiple case studies in different software domains and programming styles to improve the understanding of the findings.

CARMEN: A framework for the verification and diagnosis of the specification of security requirements in cyber-physical systems

In the last years, cyber-physical systems (CPS) are receiving substantial mainstream attention especially in industrial environments, but this popularity has been accompanied by serious security challenges. A CPS is a complex system that includes hardware and software components, with different suppliers and connection protocols, forcing complex data management and storage. For this reason, the construction, verification and diagnosis of security CPS become a major challenge, which involves a correct specification of security requirements, the verification of the correct system configurations, and if necessary, the diagnosis to detect the features to be modified to obtain a security configuration. In this paper, we propose a framework for the verification and diagnosis of security requirements, according to the possible correct configurations of the CPS. The framework is based on the specification of the security requirements and their analysis supported by Model-Driven Engineering and Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) approaches. To illustrate the usefulness, the proposal has been applied to the security requirements in an Agriculture 4.0 scenario based on automated hydroponic cultivation.

Development of a Hybrid Product Breakdown Structure and Variability Model

ABSTRACTIn transforming from a project‐based engineering approach to a product line engineering (PLE) approach, the engineering teams must have support throughout the transition from evolving tools and methodologies. As an example, the Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) is traditionally a construction‐based decomposition of a complex system, where subsystems reflect a breakdown of the engineering elements with appropriate technical interfaces, subassemblies, and team responsibility delineations. However, when used for a product line with myriad variants, a traditional PBS format provides insufficient detail and structure. As such, using standard desktop software, the author developed a hybrid PBS‐Variability Model (VM), combining the familiar PBS structure with variability modeling aspects based on feature modeling and decision modeling approaches. This resulted in an engineering artifact recognizable as a PBS and easy to adapt to design evolution, yet sufficiently expansive to initially characterize variability. In this way, the traditional PBS evolves to the hybrid PBS‐VM before transitioning to a complete variability model, thereby supporting the engineering teams transitioning from a project‐based engineering approach to a PLE approach. In this paper, the author describes the traditional PBS limitations, the hybrid model development process with a custom‐developed syntax description, the resulting hybrid model, and conclusions on appropriate product line usage.

Smart manufacturing in intelligent digital mesh: Integration of enterprise architecture and software product line engineering

Smart Manufacturing (SM) has substantial challenges, such as sharing data and integrating different systems or products into an intelligent, digital and interconnected manufacturing context. This situation naturally points to a contemporary paradigm, Intelligent Digital Mesh (IDM). Recent studies have presented the top ten state of the art technology trends called IDM, and they report forecasts about the technical developments for the future. However, the development of smart systems has been challenging, both for IDM and SM. Additionally, various sources of variability and complexities are inherent in these environments. One of them is the application of the development for SM. Except for the limited techniques; the review of literature cannot provide a comprehensive framework, which provides the integration of platform-, system- and enterprise-specific reusable solutions, while addressing the problems of mass customization and variability. Therefore, we conduct a two-phase mixed research, following the guidelines of the Design Science Research Method. The IDM, Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) approaches are combined to produce a Smart Manufacturing Development Framework (SMDF). This study can be viewed as an attempt to enhance SM and information integration knowledge domains.

Variability management in safety‐critical systems design and dependability analysis

AbstractSafety‐critical systems are of paramount importance for many application domains, where safety properties are a key driver to engineer critical aspects and avoid system failures. For the benefits of large‐scale reuse, software product lines (SPL) have been adopted in critical systems industry. However, the integration of safety analysis in the SPL development process is nontrivial. Also, the different usage contexts of safety‐critical systems complicates component fault modeling tasks and the identification of potential hazards. In this light, better methods become necessary to estimate the impact of dependability properties during Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment. Existing methods incorporating the analysis of safety properties in SPL are limited as they do not include hazard analysis and component fault modeling. In this paper, we present the novel DEPendable Software Product Line Engineering (DEPendable‐SPLE) approach, which extends traditional SPL processes to support the reuse of safety assets. We also present a detailed analysis of the impact of product and context features on the SPL design, safety analysis, and safety requirements. We applied DEPendable‐SPLE to a realistic case study from the aerospace domain to illustrate how to model and reuse safety properties. DEPendable‐SPLE reduced the effort of safety analysis for certifying system variants.

The new era of software reuse

The new era of software reuse

Evolution Pattern Verification for Services Evolution in Clouds with Model Driven Architecture

In this paper we will provide some discovered evolution patterns and its detailed underlying constitution components. Following the featured orientated model driven product line engineering approach for service evolution in clouds, an analysis on feature modeling, pattern selection and modeling will be show in this paper.

Evolution Feature Oriented Model Driven Product Line Engineering Approach for Synergistic and Dynamic Service Evolution in Clouds:Four Kinds of Schema

The proposed research will focus on developing a novel approach to solve Software Service Evolution problems in Computing Clouds. The approach will support dynamic evolution of the software service in clouds via a set of discovered evolution patterns. An initial survey informed us that such an approach does not exist yet and is in urgent need. Evolution Requirement can be classified into evolution features; researchers can describe the whole requirement by using evolution feature typology, the typology will define the relation and dependency between each features. After the evolution feature typology has been constructed, evolution model will be created to make the evolution more specific. Aspect oriented approach can be used for enhance evolution feature-model modularity. Aspect template code generation technique will be used for model transformation in the end. Product Line Engineering contains all the essential components for driving the whole evolution process.

Evolution Feature Oriented Model Driven Product Line Engineering Approach for Synergistic and Dynamic Service Evolution in Clouds

The proposed research will focus on developing a novel approach to solve Software Service Evolution problems in Computing Clouds. The approach will support dynamic evolution of the software service in clouds via a set of discovered evolution patterns. An initial survey informed us that such an approach does not exist yet and is in urgent need. Evolution Requirement can be classified into evolution features; researchers can describe the whole requirement by using evolution feature typology, the typology will define the relation and dependency between each features. After the evolution feature typology has been constructed, evolution model will be created to make the evolution more specific. Aspect oriented approach can be used for enhance evolution feature-model modularity. Aspect template code generation technique will be used for model transformation in the end. Product Line Engineering contains all the essential components for driving the whole evolution process.

Building Dynamic Software Product Lines

Dynamic software product lines extend existing product line engineering approaches by moving their capabilities to runtime, helping to ensure that system adaptations lead to desirable properties.

Development of a plug-in for Variability Modeling in Software Product Lines

Software Product Lines (SPL) take economic advantage of commonality and variability among a set of software systems that exist within a specific domain. Therefore, Software Product Line Engineering defines a series of processes for the development of a SPL that consider commonality and variability during the software life cycle. Variability modeling is therefore an essential activity in a Software Product Line Engineering approach. There are several techniques for variability modeling nowadays. COVAMOF stands out among them since it allows the modeling of variation points, variants and dependencies as first class elements. COVAMOF, therefore, provides an uniform manner for representing such concepts in different levels of abstraction within a SPL. In order to take advantage of COVAMOF benefits, it is necessary to have a computer aided tool, otherwise variability modeling and management canbe a hard tasks for the software engineer. This paper presents the development of a Eclipse plug-in for COVAMOF.

A business maturity model of software product line engineering

In the recent past, software product line engineering has become one of the most promising practices in software industry with the potential to substantially increase the software development productivity. Software product line engineering approach spans the dimensions of business, architecture, software engineering process and organization. The increasing popularity of software product line engineering in the software industry necessitates a process maturity evaluation methodology. Accordingly, this paper presents a business maturity model of software product line, which is a methodology to evaluate the current maturity of the business dimension of a software product line in an organization. This model examines the coordination between product line engineering and the business aspects of software product line. It evaluates the maturity of the business dimension of software product line as a function of how a set of business practices are aligned with product line engineering in an organization. Using the model presented in this paper, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results. This research contributes towards establishing a comprehensive and unified strategy for a process maturity evaluation of software product lines.

A feature-oriented approach for developing reusable product line assets of service-based systems

Service orientation (SO) is a relevant promising candidate for accommodating rapidly changing user needs and expectations. One of the goals of adopting SO is the improvement of reusability, however, the development of service-based system in practice has uncovered several challenging issues, such as how to identify reusable services, how to determine configurations of services that are relevant to users’ current product configuration and context, and how to maintain service validity after configuration changes. In this paper, we propose a method that addresses these issues by adapting a feature-oriented product line engineering approach. The method is notable in that it guides developers to identify reusable services at the right level of granularity and to map users’ context to relevant service configuration, and it also provides a means to check the validity of services at runtime in terms of invariants and pre/post-conditions of services. Moreover, we propose a heterogeneous style based architecture model for developing such systems.

Barriers to the adoption of software product line engineering

Software development costs and time to deploy a software-intensive system significantly decrease when Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) approach is applied. Numerous case stu-dies in industrial and military domains have shown that reliability, quality, productivity and user interface consistency improve drasti-cally in addition to the decrease of cost and time-to-market. Also, this system engineering approach is very effective in three market strategies known as cost leadership, differentiation, and focusing. Despite these measurable benefits, product line engineering adop-tion is slower than the other technological trends such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Model Driven Development (MDD), and Aspect Oriented Software Development (AOSD). In this pa-per, we investigate the barriers to the adoption of SPLE and ex-plore the root causes of them from three points of views: Project sponsor, organization, and SPLE community. We provide sugges-tions for how the industry and SPLE community can solve these multi-dimensional issues in a short term.

Value Based Pricing in the Context of Software Product Line Engineering

The Feature Oriented Reuse Method (FORM), an successor of the famous Feature Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA) method, has broaden the focus of Product Line Engineering methodologies to business concerns, especially marketing. It uses the information gathered at the marketing and product planning steps to further improve the engineering of software product lines. A drawback of the FORM is, that it does not contribute much value to concerns directly related to the marketing, such as the price of a product, the management of licenses and the settlement of some features of a product of the product line. The paper is going to show a way to extend the FORM to additionally cover the whole set of features of the product line, which carrying value for the customer, not only the parts implemented by software - the functional requirements. Namely, it focuses on the introduction of economical aspects to the domain engineering. The specialization of the original FORM is called EconFORM. The specialization is introduced by formalizing the value based pricing approach of Nagle and Hogan to a process description. This description can than be used to be integrated into a Product Line Engineering approach such as FORM. A conclusion wraps the discussion up and raises questions for future research.

프로덕트라인 아키텍처 기반 RFID 애플리케이션 개발을 위한 프레임워크

소프트웨어 프로덕트 라인은 소프트웨어 재사용에 대한 활동들을 미리 계획하고 개발 프로세스의 연속적인 부분으로 이루어지도록 지원하기 위한 방법이다. 이 방법에서 가장 중요한 기술은 관련된 시스템들, 즉 도메인에서 공통성과 가변성(commonality and variability: C&V)을 분석하고 관리하는 것이다. 본 논문에서는 소프트웨어 프로덕트 라인 방법과 RFID 적용 기술을 결합시키고자 한다. 즉, 각 기업 또는 도메인마다 RFID 기술을 도입하려고 할 때, 애플리케이션이 공통적으로 처리해야 하는 활동들을 식별하고 각 활동들이 가지는 가변요소들을 분석하여, 이를 재사용 가능한 소프트웨어 프로덕트 라인 아키텍처로 자산화 하는 방법을 제시한다. 또한 이를 실현하기 위하여 재사용 가능한 프로덕트 라인 아키텍처를 모델링 할 수 있고 식별된 공통된 기능들을 재사용 가능한 컴포넌트로 제공해주는 프레임워크를 개발한다. 공통된 아키텍처를 공유하고 반복적인 기능들을 자산으로 만들어 재사용하는 것은 경제적인 측면과 품질에서 상당한 이점을 가져다 준다. Software produce line engineering is a method that prepares for future reuse and supports seamless reuse in the application development process. Analyzing the commonality and variability between products in a product line is one of the essential concerns that must be considered when building a product line. In this paper, we suggest to combine a product line engineering approach with RFID applications technology. More concretely, common activities are identified among the RFID-enable applications and the variability in the common activities is analyzed in detail. Then, we suggest reusable product line architecture as a product line asset. In addition, as a tool for supporting this research, a framework which provides both reusable product line architecture for REID applications and the components that implement concrete realization of the architecture is developed. Sharing a common architecture and reusing assets to deploy recurrent services may be considered an advantage in terms of economic significance and overall quality.

A product-line architecture for web service-based visual composition of web applications

A web service-based web application (WSbWA) is a collection of web services or reusable proven software parts that can be discovered and invoked using standard Internet protocols. The use of these web services in the development process of WSbWAs can help overcome many problems of software use, deployment and evolution. Although the cost-effective software engineering of WSbWAs is potentially a very rewarding area, not much work has been done to accomplish short time to market conditions by viewing and dealing with WSbWAs as software products that can be derived from a common infrastructure and assets with a captured specific abstraction in the domain. Both Product Line Engineering (PLE) and Agile Methods (AMs), albeit with different philosophies, are software engineering approaches that can significantly shorten the time to market and increase the quality of products. Using the PLE approach we built, at the domain engineering level, a WSbWA-specific lightweight product-line architecture and combined it, at the application engineering level, with an Agile Method that uses a domain-specific visual language with direct manipulation and extraction capabilities of web services to perform customization and calibration of a product or WSBWA for a specific customer. To assess the effectiveness of our approach we designed and implemented a tool that we used to investigate the return on investment of the activities related to PLE and AMs. Details of our proposed approach, the related tool developed, and the experimental study performed are presented in this article together with a discussion of planned directions of future work.

TToSA : 제품계열공학으로의 전이를 위한 임베디드 소프트웨어의 모델 기반 아키텍처 변환기

Along with the enlargement of application scope, the growth of requirements complexity, and the fast development of product for embedded system, lots of industries developing embedded software try to evolve their traditional development environment into the new paradigm such as product line engineering approach. In order to sufficiently support the evolution, software architecture is essentially required to develop the embedded software. In this paper, we propose a tool, named TToSA which translates the conventional software models to software architecture models. Our TToSA is developed with the critical implication about that an industry can approach toward the new development paradigm without the big change of the existing software development method.