A model-driven traceability framework for software product lines

Abstract

Software product line (SPL) engineering is a recent approach to software development where a set of software products are derived for a well defined target application domain, from a common set of core assets using analogous means of production(for instance, through Model Driven Engineering). Therefore, such family of products are built from reuse, instead of developed individually from scratch. Software product lines promise to lower the costs of development, increase the quality of software, give clients more flexibility and reduce time to market. These benefits come with a set of new problems and turn some older problems possibly more complex. One of these problems is traceability management. In the European AMPLE project we are creating a common traceability framework across the various activities of the SPL development. We identified four orthogonal traceability dimensions in SPL development, one of which is an extension of what is often considered as "traceability of variability". This constitutes one of the two contributions of this paper. The second contribution is the specification of a metamodel for a repository of traceability links in the context of SPL and the implementation of a respective traceability framework. This framework enables fundamental traceability management operations, such as trace import and export, modification, query and visualization. The power of our framework is highlighted with an example scenario.

A model for tracing variability from features to product-line architectures: a case study in smart grids

“…FPLA is an open-source graphical tool that is available for the community as an Eclipse plug-in 4 . The use of the FPLA modeling framework to put this solution into practice is described through a set of activities as follows.…”

“…[4] íhaí defined a common íraceabiliíy framework across íhe various acíiviíies of SPL developmení and specified a meíamodel for a reposiíory of írace-abiliíy links. This framework provides a big picíure of íraceabiliíy for SPL by offering modeling primiíives for íracing any aríifací involved in íhe SPL developmení.…”

An Architectural Approach to Support Online Updates of Software Product Lines

“…Besides the intrinsic complexity of the logistic systems 3 , the problems are caused by concrete instances of the main concerns of SPL updates as we discussed in the introduction:…”

“…To define an update viewpoint for SPL, we combined a literature study on SPL evolution, including [16,17,20,1,3], with a series of interviews with stakeholders of Egemin's SPL. The focus of the study and the interviews was on identifying the key stakeholders involved in updating SPL and their main concerns, the relevant models, and the required analysis for evolving a SPL.…”

Traceability Analyses between Features and Assets in Software Product Lines

“…The main idea behind all of these works is that the variability analysis can be reduced to constraints and variables modeling the feature level variability [2,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. While there are several recent works on traceability, most of them have confined themselves to an informal treatment [16][17][18][19]. Some works have chosen a formal approach for representing the traceability and configuration of features [20].…”