Anderson Marcolino

Empirically Based Evolution of a Variability Management Approach at UML Class Level

Smarty is a variability management approach for UML-based software product lines. It allows the identification, representation and tracing of variabilities in several UML models by means of an UML profile, the Smarty Profile, and a systematic process, the Smarty Process, with guidelines to provide user directions for applying such a profile. The existing UML-based variability management approaches in the literature, including Smarty, do not provide empirical evidence of their effectiveness, which is an essential requirement for technology transfer to industry. Therefore, this paper presents empirical evidence of the Smarty approach at class level. In addition, this paper demonstrates how Smarty has evolved, by means of its profile and guidelines, based on the obtained results of an experiment and the subjects feedback analysis.

Variability Identification and Representation in Software Product Line UML Sequence Diagrams: Proposal and Empirical Study

Variability management is an essential activity to ensure which products can be instantiated from the core assets of Software Product lines (SPLs). Stereotype-based Management of Variability (SMarty) is one of the several approaches to manage variabilities specified in UML diagrams. SMarty, in its fourth version, supports variability management specification in use case, class, activity and components diagrams. However, it lacked the representation of dynamic aspects of a SPL. The inclusion of UML interaction diagrams in the core assets allows the representation of an important abstraction level. Therefore, this paper presents a proposal for extending SMarty to manage variabilities in UML sequence diagrams. In addition, it presents an experimental validation that provides evidences of the effectiveness of this extension which supports its use both in academic and industrial environment.

Towards a Software Product Line Architecture to Build M-learning Applications for the Teaching of Programming

Software Product Line (SPL) is concerned with the sharing of common features within a family of products. It offers benefits, proven in several industry success cases. Regardless of its success, such a reuse-based development methodology has not been well explored in educational fields yet, as mobile platforms. In a different but related perspective, several initiatives have been undertaken as an attempt to improve the teaching of programming; however, no reuse approaches have been considered. In this paper we discuss the most significant approaches and methodologies for the conception of an SPL architecture according to the specificities of mobile devices and the teaching of programming. As main contributions, we highlight the identification of a set of approaches that support the conduction of the initial SPL processes, the design of a conceptual architecture model, and its qualitative evaluation with stakeholders. Keywords-Mobile learning; software architecture; software product line engineering; teaching of programming.

Variability Resolution and Product Configuration with SMarty: An Experimental Study on UML Class Diagrams

Variability management is one of the most important activities during software product line development and evolution. Current literature presents several approaches for variability management, especially based on UML, such as, PLUS and SMarty. A systematic process with guidelines support SMarty. Existing literature for these kind of approaches provides slight experimental evidence of their effectiveness at product configuration. Thus, this is considered fundamental for transferring technology to the industry. This paper provides experimental evidence on the product configuration capability of SMarty by comparing it to PLUS, one of the most cited product-line method in literature. The experimental study provides incipient evidence that SMarty is more effective for resolving variabilities and configuring consistent products at UML class level. Thus, overall obtained results indicated the capability of SMarty at configuring specific products.

Comparing SMarty and PLUS for Variability Identification and Representation at Product-Line UML Class Level: A Controlled Quasi-Experiment

Although variability management is one of the main activities of software product lines, current literature provides almost no empirical evaluations on variability management approaches based on UML. This paper aims at experimentally comparing two approaches and picks SMarty and PLUS as representative examples. Such comparison takes into account their effectiveness of expressing correctly and incorrectly variabilities in UML class diagrams. We used a 2×2 factorial design for this study. We calculated and analyzed data from participants using the T-Test. The Spearman technique supported correlation of the effectiveness of the approaches and the participants prior variability knowledge. In general, PLUS was more effective than SMarty. Generalization of results is not possible as this is an incipient evidence of PLUS and SMarty effectiveness based on graduate students and lecturers. However, counting on students and lecturers provides several contributions as we discuss in this paper.

Towards an m-learning requirements catalog for the development of educational applications for the teaching of programming

The increasing adoption of ICT-based modalities to learn is a reality in several domains. However, the adoption of these modalities and their consequent benefits have not been properly exploited in domains such as the teaching of programming. This research aims at proposing a mobile learning requirements catalog capable of: (i) identify requirements to allow the development of mobile applications for teaching of programming with reuse-based Software Engineering approaches; and (ii) connect such requirements with educational theories and programming problems. The main goal is to create the necessary knowledge base to understand the domain engineering of this area. In order to initially evaluate our requirement catalog, a case study is briefly discussed. Positive evidences on the usefulness of the catalog have been achieved. In future work, the catalog will be included as part of the domain analysis phase in a reuse-based software engineering technique for the creation of m-learning applications for the teaching of programming.

Towards Validating Complexity-Based Metrics for Software Product Line Architectures

Software product line (PL) is an approach that focuses on software reuse and has been successfully applied for specific domains. The PL architecture (PLA) is one of the most important assets, and it represents commonalities and variabilities of a PL. The analysis of the PLA, supported by metrics, can be used as an important indicator of the PL quality and return on investment (ROI). This paper presents the replication of a controlled experiment for validating complexity metrics for PLAs. In particular, in this replication we are focused on evaluating how subjects less-qualified than the subjects from the original experiment evaluate complexity of a PLA by means of generated specific products. It was applied a PLA variability resolution model of a given PL to a sample of subjects from at least basic knowledge on UML modeling, PL and variability management. Apart of the selection of different subjects, the same original experiment conditions were kept. The proposed PLA complexity metrics were experimentally validated based on their application to a set of 35 derived products from the Arcade Game Maker (AGM) PL. Normality tests were applied to the metrics observed values, thus, pointing out their non-normality. Therefore, the non-parametric Spearmans correlation ranking technique was used to demonstrate the correlation between the CompPLA metric and the complexity rate given by the subjects to each derived product. Such a correlation was strong and positive. The results obtained in this replication shown that even less-qualified subjects, compared to the subjects from the original experiment, are able to rate the complexity of a PLA by means of its generated products, thus corroborating the results of the original experiment and providing more evidence that the composed metric for complexity (CompPLA) can be used as a relevant indicator for measuring the complexity of PLA based on their derived products.