Supporting multiple perspectives in feature-based configuration

  • Authors:

  • Arnaud Hubaux;Patrick Heymans;Pierre-Yves Schobbens;Dirk Deridder;Ebrahim Khalil Abbasi

  • Affiliations:

  • PReCISE Research Centre, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium;PReCISE Research Centre, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium and INRIA Lille-Nord Europe, Université de Lille 1 - LIFL - CNRS, Lille, France;PReCISE Research Centre, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium;Smals vzw, Software Languages Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium;PReCISE Research Centre, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

  • Venue:
  • Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM)
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Feature diagrams have become commonplace in software product line engineering as a means to document variability early in the life cycle. Over the years, their application has also been extended to assist stakeholders in the configuration of software products. However, existing feature-based configuration techniques offer little support for tailoring configuration views to the profiles of the various stakeholders. In this paper, we propose a lightweight, yet formal and flexible, mechanism to leverage multidimensional separation of concerns in feature-based configuration. We propose a technique to specify concerns in feature diagrams and to generate automatically concern-specific configuration views. Three alternative visualisations are proposed. Our contributions are motivated and illustrated through excerpts from a real web-based meeting management application which was also used for a preliminary evaluation. We also report on the progress made in the development of a tool supporting multi-view feature-based configuration.