Towards Erlang-based ABS Microservices Framework for Software Product Line Development

Abstract

The current widely used software system can be categorised as a large or very large decentralised control system with various requirements and continuous interchangeable elements. This characteristic leads to a need to control the variability to manage such systems. Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) is one of the approaches that can manage the variability by developing sets of products. However, there is a need for support tools for development with software product line engineering. One language that supports the SPLE process is Abstract Behavioral Specification (ABS). Some SPLE research has used ABS to create frameworks that support the SPLE process. ABS Microservices is one research that utilises ABS to create a web framework that supports the SPLE process. This framework uses ABS to generate Java-based applications. The research interest in the web application is driven by the fact that it is one of the software types widely used by organisations and serves as the primary support of their business. Microservices are highly interoperable, thus enabling researchers to integrate different technology from other research. However, there is a need for renewal to the ABS Microservices framework. There is a need for more variants of SPLE-enabled frameworks that use more programming language as a specific programming language has its strength and weakness. Deprecation of the Java backend of the ABS opens a new exploration of another web framework that uses other ABS backend languages. We present the ABS microservices web framework based on Erlang OTP. We choose Erlang because it promises more efficient resource usage and the Erlang backend is one of the ABS backends with the most available features. This research aims to create an entry point for ABS Microservices to support more language. This research shows that the Erlang variant of ABS Microservices has less resource usage than the Java variant. Hence, this promises more options to develop product lines using ABS Microservices.