Marco Sinnema

COVAMOF: A framework for modeling variability in software product families

A key aspect of variability management in software product families is the explicit representation of the variability. Experiences at several industrial software development companies have shown that a software variability model should do four things: (1) uniformly represent variation points as first-class entities in all abstraction layers (ranging from features to code), (2) allow for the hierarchical organization of the variability, (3) allow for the first-class representation of simple (i.e., one-to-one) and complex (i.e., n-to-m) dependencies, and (4) allow for modeling the relations between dependencies. Existing variability modeling approaches support the first two requirements, but lack support for the latter two. The contribution of this paper is a framework for variability modeling—COVAMOF—that provides support for all four requirements.

Product derivation in software product families: a case study

From our experience with several organizations that employ software product families, we have learned that, contrary to popular belief, deriving individual products from shared software assets is a time-consuming and expensive activity. In this paper we therefore present a study that investigated the source of those problems. We provide the reader with a framework of terminology and concepts regarding product derivation. In addition, we present several problems and issues we identified during a case study at two large industrial organizations that are relevant to other, for example, comparable or less mature organizations.

Classifying variability modeling techniques

Variability modeling is important for managing variability in software product families, especially during product derivation. In the past few years, several variability modeling techniques have been developed, each using its own concepts to model the variability provided by a product family. The publications regarding these techniques were written from different viewpoints, use different examples, and rely on a different technical background. This paper sheds light on the similarities and differences between six variability modeling techniques, by exemplifying the techniques with one running example, and classifying them using a framework of key characteristics for variability modeling. It furthermore discusses the relation between differences among those techniques, and the scope, size, and application domain of product families.

VxBPEL: Supporting variability for Web services in BPEL

Web services provide a way to facilitate the business integration over the Internet. Flexibility is an important and desirable property of Web service-based systems due to dynamic business environments. The flexibility can be provided or addressed by incorporating variability into a system. In this study, we investigate how variability can be incorporated into service-based systems. We propose a language, VxBPEL, which is an adaptation of an existing language, BPEL, and able to capture variability in these systems. We develop a prototype to interpret this language. Finally, we illustrate our method by using it to handle variability of an example.

Experiences in Software Product Families: Problems and Issues During Product Derivation

A fundamental reason for investing in product families is to minimize the application engineering costs. Several organizations that employ product families, however, are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that, despite the efforts in domain engineering, deriving individual products from their shared software assets is a time- and effort-consuming activity. In this paper, we present a collection of product derivation problems that we identified during a case study at two large and mature industrial organizations. These problems are attributed to the lack of methodological support for application engineering, and to underlying causes of complexity and implicit properties. For each problem, we provide a description and an example, while for each cause we present a description, consequences, solutions, and research issues. The discussions in this paper are relevant outside the context of the two companies, as the challenges they face arise in, for example, comparable or less mature organizations.

Modeling and managing the variability of Web service-based systems

Web service-based systems are built orchestrating loosely coupled, standardized, and internetworked programs. If on the one hand, Web services address the interoperability issues of modern information systems, on the other hand, they enable the development of software systems on the basis of reuse, greatly limiting the necessity for reimplementation. Techniques and methodologies to gain the maximum from this emerging computing paradigm are in great need. In particular, a way to explicitly model and manage variability would greatly facilitate the creation and customization of Web service-based systems. By variability we mean the ability of a software system to be extended, changed, customized or configured for use in a specific context. We present a framework and related tool suite for modeling and managing the variability of Web service-based systems for design and run-time, respectively. It is an extension of the COVAMOF framework for the variability management of software product families, which was developed at the University of Groningen. Among the novelties and advantages of the approach are the full modeling of variability via UML diagrams, the run-time support, and the low involvement of the user. All of which leads to a great deal of automation in the management of all kinds of variability.

Modeling dependencies in product families with COVAMOF

Many variability modeling approaches consider only formalized dependencies, i.e. in- or exclude relations between variants. However, in real industrial product families, dependencies are often much more complicated. In this paper, we discuss the product derivation problems associated with dependencies, and show how our variability modeling framework COVAMOF addresses these issues. Throughout the paper, we use examples of Intrada, an intelligent traffic systems family of Dacolian B.V

Industrial validation of COVAMOF

COVAMOF is a variability management framework for product families that was developed to reduce the number of iterations required during product derivation and to reduce the dependency on experts. In this paper, we present the results of an experiment with COVAMOF in industry. The results show that with COVAMOF, engineers that are not involved in the product family were now capable of deriving the products in 100% of the cases, compared to 29% of the cases without COVAMOF. For experts, the use of COVAMOF reduced the number of iterations by 42%, and the total derivation time by 38%.

Good Practices for Educational Software Engineering Projects

Recent publications indicate the importance of software engineering in the computer science curriculum. In this paper, we present the final part of software engineering education at University of Groningen in the Netherlands and Vaxjo University in Sweden, where student teams perform an industrial software development project. It furthermore presents the main educational problems encountered in such real-life projects and explains how this international course addresses these problems. The main contribution of this paper is a set of seven good practices for project based software engineering education.

The COVAMOF derivation process

The design, usage and maintenance of variability, i.e. variability management, is a very complex and time-consuming task in industrial product families. The COVAMOF Variability Modeling Framework is our approach to enable efficient variability management. As a practical realization of COVAMOF, swe developed the COVAMOF-VS tool suite, which provides several variability views on C#, C++, Java, and many other types of projects in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. In this paper, we show how COVAMOF facilitates an engineer during product derivation, and what benefits are gained by it.