Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 8, numbers 3 and 4, 2015 // View article

A Framework for Ensuring Non-Duplication of Features in Software Product Lines

Authors:
Amal Khtira
Anissa Benlarabi
Bouchra El Asri

Keywords: Software Product Line Evolution; Domain Engineering; Application Engineering; Feature Duplication; Natural Language Processing.

Abstract:
Since the emergence of Software Product Line Engineering, the requirements evolution issue has been addressed by many researchers and many approaches have been proposed. However, most studies focused on evolution in domain engineering while application engineering has not received the same attention. During the evolution of a derived product, new features are added or modified in the application model, which may cause many model defects, such as inconsistency and duplication. These defects are introduced to the existing models from the non-verified specifications related to the SPL evolutions. Since these specifications are most of the time expressed in natural language, the task of detecting defects becomes more complicated and error-prone. The aim of this paper is to present a framework that transforms both the SPL feature models and the specification of a new evolution into a more formal representation and provides algorithms to determine the duplicated features between the specification and the existing models. In addition, we describe a support tool created based on the framework and we evaluate the efficacy of our approach using an open source product line.

Pages: 339 to 349

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2015. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 30, 2015

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2628