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Assisting Configurations-Based Feature Model Composition

Union, Intersection and Approximate Intersection

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2017)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 866))

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Abstract

Feature Models (FMs) have been introduced in the domain of Software Product Lines (SPL) to model and represent product variability. They have become a de facto standard, based on a logical tree structure accompanied by textual cross-tree constraints. Other representations are: (product) configuration sets from concrete software product lines, logical representations, constraint programming, or conceptual structures, coming from the Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) framework. Modeling variability through FMs may consist in extracting them from configuration sets (namely, doing FM synthesis), or designing them in several steps potentially involving several teams with different concerns. FM composition is useful in this design activity as it may assist FM iterative building. In this paper, we describe an approach, based on a configuration set and focusing on two main composition semantics (union, intersection), to assist designers in FM composition. We also introduce an approximate intersection notion. FCA is used to represent, for a product family, all the FMs that have the same configuration set through a canonical form. The approach is able to take into account cross-tree constraints and FMs with different feature sets and tree structure, thus it lets the expert free of choosing a different ontological interpretation. We describe the implementation of our approach and we present a set of concrete examples.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://nyx.unice.fr/projects/familiar/.

  2. 2.

    http://dolques.free.fr/rcaexplore/.

  3. 3.

    http://www.splot-research.org/.

  4. 4.

    http://familiar.variability.io/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. LIRMM, CNRS and Université de Montpellier, 161 rue Ada, 34095, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Jessie Carbonnel, Marianne Huchard & Clémentine Nebut

  2. TETIS, IRSTEA, 500 rue Jean-François Breton, 34093, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    André Miralles

Authors
  1. Jessie Carbonnel
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  2. Marianne Huchard
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  3. André Miralles
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  4. Clémentine Nebut
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marianne Huchard .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Ernesto Damiani

  2. City University London, London, United Kingdom

    George Spanoudakis

  3. Macquarie University, Sydney, Wroclaw University of Economics, Wroclaw, Poland

    Leszek Maciaszek

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Carbonnel, J., Huchard, M., Miralles, A., Nebut, C. (2018). Assisting Configurations-Based Feature Model Composition. In: Damiani, E., Spanoudakis, G., Maciaszek, L. (eds) Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering. ENASE 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 866. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94135-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94135-6_6

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