The Semantics of Cardinality-Based Feature Models via Formal Languages

Safilian, Aliakbar; Maibaum, Tom; Diskin, Zinovy

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19249-9_28

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Several approaches, [3,12,15], and [35], have been proposed connecting feature modeling to formal languages. The closest work to ours is [35], where we provided a semantics for cardinalitybased feature models (a generalization of models in which we deal with feature instances) by using formal languages as the semantic domain. We first proposed a generalization of cardinality-based FDs (CFDs), called cardinalitybased regular expression diagrams (CRDs) in which a label of a node can be any regular expression built over a set of features.…”

Section: Related Work In Feature Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Let A(M ) denote this automaton. Applying the translation procedure on M described in [35], the regular expression generated for M would be equal to R = c (e b (ε + a) + b (ε + a) e). Note that there are infinite number of automata whose languages are equal to the language of R. On the other hand, the Kripke approach generates a unique automaton for a given model, as we saw in the example above.…”

Section: Related Work In Feature Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Faithful Modeling of Product Lines with Kripke Structures and Modal Logic

Diskin¹,

Safilian²,

Maibaum³

et al. 2016

SACS

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Software product lines are now an established framework for software design. They are specified by special diagrams called feature models. For formal analysis, the latter are usually encoded by Boolean propositional theories. We discuss a major deficiency of this semantics, and show that it can be fixed by considering a product to be an instantiation process rather than its final result. We call intermediate states of this process partial products, and argue that what a feature model really defines is a poset of its partial products. We argue that such structures can be viewed as special Kripke structure that we call partial product Kripke structures, ppKS. To specify these Kripke structures, we propose a CTL-based logic, called partial product CTL, ppCTL. We show how to represent a feature model M by a ppCTL theory ML(M ) (ML stands for modal logic) such that any ppKS satisfying the theory is equal to the partial product line determined by M . Hence, ML(M ) can be considered a sound and complete representation of M . We also discuss several applications of the modal logic view in feature modeling, including refactoring of feature models.

show abstract

Section: Related Work In Feature Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Work In Feature Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Faithful Modeling of Product Lines with Kripke Structures and Modal Logic

Diskin¹,

Safilian²,

Maibaum³

et al. 2016

SACS

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…iv For example, the following multisets are valid flat products of the CFD D in Figure 2, where m = vehicle, gear, brake, engine . iv [23] considers another condition as follows: If a non-root feature is included in a flat product then its parent must be included too. However, it is a consequence of our condition (ii).…”

Section: Cfds and Flat Mset Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The closest work to ours is [23], where a faithful semantics for CFDs was provided by using regular languages as the semantic domain. By a faithful semantics for a CFD, the authors mean a semantics capturing the flat semantics and the hierarchy of the CFD (all information essential for answering the existing analysis questions about the CFD).…”

Section: Hierarchical Semanticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Hierarchical Multiset Theories of Cardinality-Based Feature Diagrams

Safilian

Maibaum

2016

2016 10th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering (TASE)

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Software product line engineering is a very common method for designing complex software systems. Feature modeling is the most common approach to specify product lines. The main part of a feature model is a special tree of features called a feature diagram. Cardinality-based feature diagrams provide the most expressive tool among the current feature diagram languages. The most common characterization of the semantics of a cardinality-based diagram is the set of flat multisets over features satisfying the constraints. However, this semantics provides a poor abstract view of the diagram. We address this problem by proposing another multiset theory for the cardinality-based feature diagram, called the hierarchical theory of the diagram. We show that this semantics captures all information of the diagram so that one can retrieve the diagram from its hierarchical semantics. We also characterize sets of multisets, which can provide a hierarchical semantics of some diagrams.

show abstract