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Evaluating scenario-based SPL requirements approaches: the case for modularity, stability and expressiveness

  • Requirements Engineering in Software Product Lines
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Abstract

Software product lines (SPL) provide support for productivity gains through systematic reuse. Among the various quality attributes supporting these goals, modularity, stability and expressiveness of feature specifications, their composition and configuration knowledge emerge as strategic values in modern software development paradigms. This paper presents a metric-based evaluation aiming at assessing how well the chosen qualities are supported by scenario-based SPL requirements approaches. The selected approaches for this study span from type of notation (textual or graphical based), style to support variability (annotation or composition based), and specification expressiveness. They are compared using the metrics developed in a set of releases from an exemplar case study. Our major findings indicate that composition-based approaches have greater potential to support modularity and stability, and that quantification mechanisms simplify and increase expressiveness of configuration knowledge and composition specifications.

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Notes

  1. http://cserg0.site.uottawa.ca/cma2013re/, or http://cserg0.site.uottawa.ca/cma2013models/.

  2. http://www.cs.colostate.edu/remodd/v1/sites/default/files/cms_case_study.pdf.

  3. http://www.cs.colostate.edu/remodd/v1/.

  4. An editable feature model and statistics are available at http://www.splot-research.org/.

  5. Use scenarios describe a single path of logic, whereas use cases typically describe several paths (usually the basic flow plus alternate paths).

  6. http://people.irisa.fr/Edward-Mauricio.Alferez_Salinas/REJ/REJ-Data.htm.

  7. An early version of VML4RE [2] had some language constructs that simplify matching specific fragments (i.e., join points) in the scenarios reducing the verbosity of the composition model. For example, pointcut designators such as “equal,” “startsBy,” “finishesWith,” “contains” and quantifiers such as “*”, “?”

  8. http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~joerg/SEL/AOM_Bellairs_2012.html.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the Centro de Informática e Tecnologias de Informação (CITI) - Portugal, the European Project AMPLE - contract IST-33710, the grant SFRH/BD/46194/2008 of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - Portugal, and the National Institute of Science and Technology for Software Engineering (INES) - CNPq under grants 573964/2008-4 and CNPQ 560256/2010-8.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Triskell Team, INRIA, Rennes, France

    Mauricio Alférez

  2. Computer Science Department / CITI, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal

    Mauricio Alférez, Ana Moreira & João Araújo

  3. Computer Science Department, University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil

    Rodrigo Bonifácio

  4. Informatics Center, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil

    Leopoldo Teixeira, Paola Accioly & Paulo Borba

  5. Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics (DIMAp), Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil

    Uirá Kulesza

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  1. Mauricio Alférez
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  8. Paulo Borba
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Correspondence to Mauricio Alférez.

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Alférez, M., Bonifácio, R., Teixeira, L. et al. Evaluating scenario-based SPL requirements approaches: the case for modularity, stability and expressiveness. Requirements Eng 19, 355–376 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-013-0184-5

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