Feature Model Synthesis from Language-Independent Functional Descriptions

Abstract

Software product lines (SPLs) identify and manage the commonalities and variability, called features, among the variants of products in a given domain. This reuse technique improves productivity factors such as reducing costs and time to market while enabling the derivation of particular applications that meet customers' needs by reusing the domains' artifacts. In this paper, we tackle the problem of SPL extraction from language-independent functional descriptions of existing product variants. Our contribution consists in synthesizing the SPL feature model from possibly incomplete requirements (use case diagrams, scenarios and functional requirements) of the product variants. To validate our approach, we applied it on five case studies: ArgoUML-SPL (small-scale system), Mobile Media-SPL and Messaging-SPL (medium scale systems), Health complaint-SPL and Crisis management-SPL (large scale systems). For this purpose, we used several releases from these domains as the considered product variants. Then, we applied our approach and evaluated its efficiency through measurements.