Variability in Software Systems—A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Context: Variability (i.e., the ability of software systems or artifacts to be adjusted for different contexts) became a key property of many systems. Objective: We analyze existing research on variability in software systems. We investigate variability handling in major software engineering phases (e.g., requirements engineering, architecting). Method: We performed a systematic literature review. A manual search covered 13 premium software engineering journals and 18 premium conferences, resulting in 15,430 papers searched and 196 papers considered for analysis. To improve reliability and to increase reproducibility, we complemented the manual search with a targeted automated search. Results: Software quality attributes have not received much attention in the context of variability. Variability is studied in all software engineering phases, but testing is underrepresented. Data to motivate the applicability of current approaches are often insufficient; research designs are vaguely described. Conclusions: Based on our findings we propose dimensions of variability in software engineering. This empirically grounded classification provides a step towards a unifying, integrated perspective of variability in software systems, spanning across disparate or loosely coupled research themes in the software engineering community. Finally, we provide recommendations to bridge the gap between research and practice and point to opportunities for future research.

Execution of UML models: a systematic review of research and practice

“…We decided to follow the strategies already applied in [5,19], and we based our quality assessment strategy on the assessment instrument used in [17]. Specifically, we formulated the quality score of a study according to a set of criteria formulated as questions.…”

“…Specifically, we formulated the quality score of a study according to a set of criteria formulated as questions. Table 4 presents the questions we used for our study, which were inspired by those proposed in [5,19]. Each quality assessment question was answered by assigning a numerical value (1 = "yes", 0 = "no", and 0.5 = "to some extent") [19].…”

“…An example of this positive synergy is the Eclipse Papyrus project, which started as an open-source project lead by the LISE team of a research division of the French alternative energies and atomic energy commission (CEA) and is supported by an industry consortium under the Eclipse Foundation umbrella now. 19 Along the same lines, another recurrent improvement among research studies is tool enhancement (20/63). Similarly to the case of expressiveness, we can trace the motivation behind this result to the limited resources of researchers when considering a large language like UML.…”

“…Also, it is important to note that in some cases research groups may be more interested in providing a prototype tool for giving evidence about their scientific results, rather than in providing an industry-ready, fully functional tool. As a natural consequence of this situation, tool enhancement for a specific 19 http://projects.eclipse.org/projects/modeling.mdt.papyrus/who. research-driven solution is one of the most common needs for improvement.…”

An Evaluation of the Challenges of Multilingualism in Data Warehouse Development

“…There are different approaches and techniques for variability management in the literature. They can be classified as (Galster et al, 2013): compositional, annotative, transformational, and model-driven. This study concerns on compositional and annotative ap- proaches as they are highly referenced in the literature.…”