Integrating feature-based implementation approaches using a common graph-based representation

Behringer, Benjamin; Rothkugel, Steffen

doi:10.1145/2851613.2851791

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Several other approaches start to develop combinations of annotation‐based and composition‐based approaches. () However, these are only under progress and require further analysis. Furthermore, it would be advantageous to integrate them into a single framework.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The goal is to improve the integration of both techniques, for instance, with adapted tools. In another article, Behringer and Rothkugel build on this idea and introduce the usage of structured document graphs. This model enables developers to switch between the composition‐based, annotation‐based, and mixed implementations of the same product line.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Composing annotations without regret? Practical experiences using FeatureC

Krüger

Pinnecke

Kenner³

et al. 2017

Softw Pract Exp

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Software product lines enable developers to derive similar products from a common code base. Existing implementation techniques can be categorized as composition-based and annotation-based approaches, with both approaches promising complementary benefits. However, annotation-based approaches are commonly used in practice despite composition allowing physical separation of features and, thus, improving traceability and maintenance. A main hindrance to migrate annotated systems toward a composition-based product line is the challenging and time-consuming transformation task. For a company, it is difficult to predict the corresponding costs, and a successful outcome is uncertain. To overcome such problems, a solution proposed by the previous work is to use a hybrid approach, utilizing composition and annotation simultaneously. Based on this idea, we introduce a stepwise migration process from annotation-based toward composition-based approaches to lower the adoption barrier of composition. This process itself is independent of used implementation techniques and enables developers to incrementally migrate toward composition. We support our approach with detailed examples by partially migrating a real-world system.In detail, we describe the following: (1) our migration process, (2) its application on a real-world system, and (3) discuss practical challenges we face. We implemented the proposed approach and show that appropriate tool support helps to migrate toward composition-based product lines. Based on the case study, we show that the hybrid product lines work correctly and can compete with the performance of the original annotated system. However, the results also illustrate open issues that have to be solved to apply such migrations in practice.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Composing annotations without regret? Practical experiences using FeatureC

Krüger

Pinnecke

Kenner³

et al. 2017

Softw Pract Exp

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…However, they focus on describing only general ideas for a combined approach, and on discussing the resulting characteristics (granularity, traceability, etc.). Walkingshaw and Erwig [49], Batory [6,7], and Behringer [9,10] also provide theoretical researches related with the idea of combining composition and annotative approaches. Walkingshaw and Erwig [49] present compositional choice calculus, a formal calculus model to unify composition and annotations, and put it into practice [50] by generating editable documents (views) from a variability-aware abstract syntac tree.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These models formalize the concept of module with variation points, the composition of them and the decomposition of the modules into smaller parts, simulating annotations for Feature-Oriented Software Development (FOSD) [2]. Behringer et al [9,10] propose to unify composition and annotative approaches with adapted tools [10]. In particular, they propose structured document graphs [10] based on the compositional choice calculus [49] to change between composition, annotations, and the combination of both approaches in an SPL.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrating the common variability language with multilanguage annotations for web engineering

Horcas

Cortiñas

Fuentes

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 22nd International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume 1

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Web applications development involves managing a high diversity of files and resources like code, pages or style sheets, implemented in different languages. To deal with the automatic generation of custom-made configurations of web applications, industry usually adopts annotation-based approaches even though the majority of studies encourage the use of composition-based approaches to implement Software Product Lines. Recent work tries to combine both approaches to get the complementary benefits. However, technological companies are reticent to adopt new development paradigms such as feature-oriented programming or aspect-oriented programming. Moreover, it is extremely difficult, or even impossible, to apply these programming models to web applications, mainly because of their multilingual nature, since their development involves multiple types of source code (Java, Groovy, JavaScript), templates (HTML, Markdown, XML), style sheet files (CSS and its variants, such as SCSS), and other files (JSON, YML, shell scripts). We propose to use the Common Variability Language as a composition-based approach and integrate annotations to manage fine grained variability of a Software Product Line for web applications. In this paper, we (i) show that existing composition and annotation-based approaches, including some well-known combinations, are not appropriate to model and implement the variability of web applications; and (ii) present a combined approach that effectively integrates annotations into a composition-based approach for web applications. We implement our approach and show its applicability with an industrial real-world system.

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