Context: Software processes evolve over time and several approaches were proposed to support the required flexibility. Yet, little is known whether these approaches sufficiently support the development of large software processes. A software process line helps to systematically develop and manage families of processes and, as part of this, variability operations provide means to modify and reuse pre-defined process assets. Objective: Our goal is to evaluate the feasibility of variability operations to support the development of flexible software process lines. Method: We conducted a longitudinal study in which we studied 5 variants of the V-Modell XT process line for 2 years. Results: Our results show the variability operation instrument feasible in practice. We analyzed 616 operation exemplars addressing various customization scenarios, and we found 87 different operation types contributed by 3 metamodel variants developed by different teams in different contexts. Conclusions: Although variability operations are only one instrument among others, our results suggest this instrument useful to implement variability in real-life software process lines.
Querying models is one of the most essential and most elementary tasks in model-based software development. More complex activities like, for instance finding source patterns of model transformations, measuring models, or checking consistency between models, include querying models for certain properties, elements, or substructures.Logic formalisms like full first-predicate logic or description logics provide the well-understood foundation for implementing efficient model querying mechanisms. Regarding the specific purpose of querying models, a more efficient but less expressive logic formalism might be more useful than in other use cases.In this paper, we will introduce a framework which enables us to easily realise metamodel independent query tools based on different subsets of first-order logic. We show the application of the framework by checking a UML design model for architectural properties.
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