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Section: New Results
Results on Variability modeling and management
Feature Model Synthesis: Algorithms and Empirical Studies
We attack the problem of synthesising feature models by considering both configuration semantics and ontological semantics of a feature model. We define a generic synthesis procedure that computes the likely siblings or parent candidates for a given feature. We develop six heuristics for clustering and weighting the logical, syntactical and semantical relationships between feature names. We then perform an empirical evaluation on hundreds of feature models, coming from the SPLOT repository and Wikipedia. We provide evidence that a fully automated synthesis (i.e., without any user intervention) is likely to produce models far from the ground truths. As the role of the user is crucial, we empirically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of heuristics for computing ranking lists and different kinds of clusters. We show that a hybrid approach mixing logical and ontological techniques outperforms state-of-the-art solutions.
Numerous synthesis techniques and tools have been proposed, but only a few consider both configuration and ontological semantics of a feature model. We also boil down several feature model management operations to a synthesis problem. Our approach, the FAMILIAR environment, and empirical results support researchers and practitioners working on feature models. The synthesis problem is a core issue when reverse engineering, merging, slicing, or refactoring feature models. An article has been published in 2016 at Empirical Software Engineering journal, a major avenue for software engineering research [19].
Product Comparison Matrix
Product Comparison Matrices (PCMs) are widely used for documenting or comparing a set of products. PCMs are simple tabular data in which products are usually organized as rows, features as columns, while each cell define how a product implements the corresponding feature. We develop metamodeling and feature modeling techniques for formalizing PCMs. We perform numerous empirical experiments with users, tools, and data for validating our proposal. We also develop automated techniques to extract PCMs out of informal product descriptions, written in natural language. We establish a connection between PCMs and variability modeling formalism, which is of interest for the product line community. OpenCompare is a direct output of this research and is an important step towards the creation of a community around PCMs. We mined millions of Wikipedia tabular data together with end-users and developers to cross-validate our model-based approach [19]. We also mined data from BestBuy [17].
Machine Learning and Variability Testing
We propose the use of a machine learning approach to infer variability constraints from an oracle that is able to assess whether a given configuration is correct. We propose an automated procedure to randomly generate configurations, classify them according to the oracle, and synthesize cross-tree constraints. We validate our approach on a product-line video generator, using a simple computer vision algorithm as an oracle. We show that an interesting set of cross-tree constraint can be generated, with reasonable precision and recall. Our learning-based testing technique complements our initial effort in engineering an industrial video generator. The use of learning allows to significantly narrow the configuration space and discover complex constraints, hard to discover even for experts. We conduct a series of work in the computer vision domain to generate variants of videos, investigating the usefulness and effectiveness of variability techniques in novel areas. Our approach is novel and general: the same principles can be applied to other configurable systems [55].
Enumeration of All Feature Model Configurations
Feature models are widely used to encode the configurations of a software product line in terms of mandatory, optional and exclusive features as well as propositional constraints over the features. Numerous computationally expensive procedures have been developed to model check, test, configure, debug, or compute relevant information of feature models. We explore the possible improvement of relying on the enumeration of all configurations when performing automated analysis operations. We tackle the challenge of how to scale the existing enumeration techniques by relying on distributed computing. We show that the use of distributed computing techniques might offer practical solutions to previously unsolvable problems and opens new perspectives for the automated analysis of software product lines [40].
Software Unbundling
Unbundling is a phenomenon that consists of dividing an existing software artifact into smaller ones. It can happen for different reasons, one of them is the fact that applications tend to grow in functionalities and sometimes this can negatively influence the user experience. It can be seen as a way to produce different variants of an application. For example, mobile applications from well-known companies are being divided into simpler and more focused new ones. Despite its current importance, little is known or studied about unbundling or about how it relates to existing software engineering approaches, such as modularization. Consequently, recent cases point out that it has been performed unsystematically and arbitrarily. Our main goal is to present this novel and relevant concept and its underlying challenges in the light of software engineering, also exemplifying it with recent cases. We relate unbundling to standard software modularization, presenting the new motivations behind it, the resulting problems, and drawing perspectives for future support in the area [23].
Featured Model Types
By analogy with software product reuse, the ability to reuse (meta)models and model transformations is key to achieve better quality and productivity. To this end, various opportunistic reuse techniques have been developed, such as higher-order transformations, metamodel adaptation, and model types. However, in contrast to software product development that has moved to systematic reuse by adopting (model-driven) software product lines, we are not quite there yet for modelling languages, missing economies of scope and automation opportunities. Our vision is to transpose the product line paradigm at the metamodel level, where reusable assets are formed by metamodel and transformation fragments and "products" are reusable language building blocks (model types). We introduce featured model types to concisely model variability amongst metamodelling elements, enabling configuration, automated analysis, and derivation of tailored model types [53].
A Formal Modeling and Analysis Framework for SPL of Pre-emptive Real-time Systems
We present a formal analysis framework to analyze a family of platform products w.r.t. real-time properties. First, we propose an extension of the widely-used feature model, called Property Feature Model (PFM), that distinguishes features and properties explicitly Second, we present formal behavioral models of components of a real-time scheduling unit such that all real-time scheduling units implied by a PFM are automatically composed to be analyzed against the properties given by the PFM. We apply our approach to the verification of the schedulability of a family of scheduling units using the symbolic and statistical model checkers of Uppaal [44].
Exploration of Architectural Variants
In systems engineering, practitioners shall explore numerous architectural alternatives until choosing the most adequate variant. The decision-making process is most of the time a manual, time-consuming, and error-prone activity. The exploration and justification of architectural solutions is ad-hoc and mainly consists in a series of tries and errors on the modeling assets.
We report on an industrial case study in which we apply variability modeling techniques to automate the assessment and comparison of several candidate architectures (variants). We first describe how we can use a model-based approach such as the Common Variability Language (CVL) to specify the architectural variability. We show that the selection of an architectural variant is a multi-criteria decision problem in which there are numerous interactions (veto, favor, complementary) between criteria. We present a tooled process for exploring architectural variants integrating both CVL and the MYRIAD method for assessing and comparing variants based on an explicit preference model coming from the elicitation of stakeholders' concerns. This solution allows understanding differences among variants and their satisfactions with respect to criteria. Beyond variant selection automation improvement, this experiment results highlight that the approach improves rationality in the assessment and provides decision arguments when selecting the preferred variants. It is a joint work and collaboration with Thales [47].
A Complexity Tale: Web Configurators
Online configurators are basically everywhere. From physical goods (cars, clothes) to services (cloud solutions, insurances, etc.) such configurators have pervaded many areas of everyday life, in order to provide the customers products tailored to their needs. Being sometimes the only interfaces between product suppliers and consumers, much care has been devoted to the HCI aspects of configurators, aiming at offering an enjoyable buying experience. However, at the backend, the management of numerous and complex configuration options results from ad-hoc process rather than a systematic variability-aware engineering approach. We present our experience in analysing web configurators and formalising configuration options in terms of feature models or product configuration matrices. We also consider behavioural issues and perspectives on their architectural design [32].