XTraQue: traceability for product line systems

Product line engineering has been increasingly used to support the development and deployment of software systems that share a common set of features and are developed based on the reuse of core assets. The large number and heterogeneity of documents generated during the development of product line systems may cause difficulties to identify common and variable aspects among applications, and to reuse core assets that are available under the product line. In this paper, we present a traceability approach for product line systems. Traceability has been recognised as an important task in software system development. Traceability relations can improve the quality of the product being developed and reduce development time and cost. We present a rule-based approach to support automatic generation of traceability relations between feature-based object-oriented documents. We define a traceability reference model with nine different types of traceability relations for eight types of documents. The traceability rules used in our work are classified into two groups namely (a) direct rules, which support the creation of traceability relations that do not depend on the existence of other relations, and (b) indirect rules, which require the existence of previously generated relations. The documents are represented in XML and the rules are represented in an extension of XQuery. A prototype tool called XTraQue has been implemented. This tool, together with a mobile phone product line case study, has been used to demonstrate and evaluate our work in various experiments. The results of these experiments are encouraging and comparable with other approaches that support automatic generation of traceability relations. This work has been partially supported by Dhurakijpundit University, Thailand.     

面向软件安全性需求分析过程的追踪模型

追踪性即关联一些制品及其中各种相关要素的机制或能力。安全关键系统开发不仅包括一般系统的开发过程,更重要的是必需要有独立的安全性分析,建立并验证系统的安全性需求。目前针对安全性分析过程的追踪性研究较少。安全相关标准如ARP-4761和DO 178C等提供了安全性分析过程的指导意见,然而其由于涉及的概念和方法很多,因此在实际应用和研究中常会忽略对一些关键信息的追踪。此外,软件安全性需求分析不仅应考虑系统到软件的安全性分析,还应考虑软件到系统的安全性分析。面向软件安全性需求分析过程建立安全性相关信息的双向追踪,有助于了解安全性需求的前因后果,为验证工作和影响分析提供便利。参照标准,构建面向软件安全性需求分析过程的追踪模型。     

Key activities for product derivation in software product lines

More and more organizations adopt software product lines to leverage extensive reuse and deliver a multitude of benefits such as increased quality and productivity and a decrease in cost and time-to-market of their software development. When compared to the vast amount of research on developing product lines, relatively little work has been dedicated to the actual use of product lines to derive individual products, i.e., the process of product derivation. Existing approaches to product derivation have been developed independently for different aims and purposes. While the definition of a general approach applicable to every domain may not be possible, it would be interesting for researchers and practitioners to know which activities are common in existing approaches, i.e., what are the key activities in product derivation. In this paper we report on how we compared two product derivation approaches developed by the authors in two different, independent research projects. Both approaches independently sought to identify product derivation activities, one through a process reference model and the other through a tool-supported derivation approach. Both approaches have been developed and validated in research industry collaborations with different companies. Through the comparison of the approaches we identify key product derivation activities. We illustrate the activities’ importance with examples from industry collaborations. To further validate the activities, we analyze three existing product derivation approaches for their support for these activities. The validation provides evidence that the identified activities are relevant to product derivation and we thus conclude that they should be considered (e.g., as a checklist) when developing or evaluating a product derivation approach.     

Design-code traceability recovery: selecting the basic linkage properties

Traceability ensures that software artifacts of subsequent phases of the development cycle are consistent. Few works have so far addressed the problem of automatically recovering traceability links between object-oriented (OO) design and code entities. Such a recovery process is required whenever there is no explicit support of traceability from the development process. The recovered information can drive the evolution of the available design so that it corresponds to the code, thus providing a still useful and updated high-level view of the system.

Automatic recovery of traceability links can be achieved by determining the similarity of paired elements from design and code. The choice of the properties involved in the similarity computation is crucial for the success of the recovery process. In fact, design and code objects are complex artifacts with several properties attached. The basic anchors of the recovered traceability links should be chosen as those properties (or property combinations) which are expected to be maintained during the transformation of design into code. This may depend on specific practices and/or the development environment, which should therefore be properly accounted for.

In this paper different categories of basic properties of design and code entities will be analyzed with respect to the contribution they give to traceability recovery. Several industrial software components will be employed as a benchmark on which the performances of the alternatives are measured.     

BPMNt: A BPMN extension for specifying software process tailoring

ContextAlthough SPEM 2.0 has great potential for software process modeling, it does not provide concepts or formalisms for precise modeling of process behavior. Indeed, SPEM fails to address process simulation, execution, monitoring and analysis, which are important activities in process management. On the other hand, BPMN 2.0 is a widely used notation to model business processes that has associated tools and techniques to facilitate the aforementioned process management activities. Using BPMN to model software development processes can leverage BPMN’s infrastructure to improve the quality of these processes. However, BPMN lacks an important feature to model software processes: a mechanism to represent process tailoring.ObjectiveThis paper proposes BPMNt, a conservative extension to BPMN that aims at creating a tailoring representation mechanism similar to the one found in SPEM 2.0.MethodWe have used the BPMN 2.0 extensibility mechanism to include the representation of specific tailoring relationships namely suppression, local contribution, and local replacement, which establish links between process elements (such as in the case of SPEM). Moreover, this paper also presents some rules to ensure the consistency of BPMN models when using tailoring relationships.ResultsIn order to evaluate our proposal we have implemented a tool to support the BPMNt approach and have applied it for representing real process adaptations in the context of an academic management system development project. Results of this study showed that the approach and its support tool can successfully be used to adapt BPMN-based software processes in real scenarios.ConclusionWe have proposed an approach to enable reuse and adaptation of BPMN-based software process models as well as derivation traceability between models through tailoring relationships. We believe that bringing such capabilities into BPMN will open new perspectives to software process management.     

Towards automated traceability maintenance

Traceability relations support stakeholders in understanding the dependencies between artifacts created during the development of a software system and thus enable many development-related tasks. To ensure that the anticipated benefits of these tasks can be realized, it is necessary to have an up-to-date set of traceability relations between the established artifacts. This goal requires the creation of traceability relations during the initial development process. Furthermore, the goal also requires the maintenance of traceability relations over time as the software system evolves in order to prevent their decay. In this paper, an approach is discussed that supports the (semi-) automated update of traceability relations between requirements, analysis and design models of software systems expressed in the UML. This is made possible by analyzing change events that have been captured while working within a third-party UML modeling tool. Within the captured flow of events, development activities comprised of several events are recognized. These are matched with predefined rules that direct the update of impacted traceability relations. The overall approach is supported by a prototype tool and empirical results on the effectiveness of tool-supported traceability maintenance are provided.     

DRAMA: A framework for domain requirements analysis and modeling architectures in software product lines

One of the benefits of software product line approach is to improve time-to-market. The changes in market needs cause software requirements to be flexible in product lines. Whenever software requirements are changed, software architecture should be evolved to correspond with them. Therefore, domain architecture should be designed based on domain requirements. It is essential that there is traceability between requirements and architecture, and that the structure of architecture is derived from quality requirements. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for modeling domain architecture based on domain requirements within product lines. In particular, we focus on the traceable relationship between requirements and architectural structures. Our framework consists of processes, methods, and a supporting tool. It uses four basic concepts, namely, goal based domain requirements analysis, Analytical Hierarchy Process, Matrix technique, and architecture styles. Our approach is illustrated using HIS (Home Integration System) product line. Finally, industrial examples are used to validate DRAMA.     

Supporting distributed product configuration by integrating heterogeneous variability modeling approaches

ContextIn industrial settings products are developed by more than one organization. Software vendors and suppliers commonly typically maintain their own product lines, which contribute to a larger (multi) product line or software ecosystem. It is unrealistic to assume that the participating organizations will agree on using a specific variability modeling technique—they will rather use different approaches and tools to manage the variability of their systems.ObjectiveWe aim to support product configuration in software ecosystems based on several variability models with different semantics that have been created using different notations.MethodWe present an integrative approach that provides a unified perspective to users configuring products in multi product line environments, regardless of the different modeling methods and tools used internally. We also present a technical infrastructure and a prototype implementation based on web services.ResultsWe show the feasibility of the approach and its implementation by using it with the three most widespread types of variability modeling approaches in the product line community, i.e., feature-based, OVM-style, and decision-oriented modeling. To demonstrate the feasibility and flexibility of our approach, we present an example derived from industrial experience in enterprise resource planning. We further applied the approach to support the configuration of privacy settings in the Android ecosystem based on multiple variability models. We also evaluated the performance of different model enactment strategies used in our approach.ConclusionsTools and techniques allowing stakeholders to handle variability in a uniform manner can considerably foster the initiation and growth of software ecosystems from the perspective of software reuse and configuration.     

DCTracVis: a system retrieving and visualizing traceability links between source code and documentation

It is well recognized that traceability links between software artifacts provide crucial support in comprehension, efficient development, and effective management of a software system. However, automated traceability systems to date have been faced with two major open research challenges: how to extract traceability links with both high precision and high recall, and how to efficiently visualize links for complex systems because of scalability and visual clutter issues. To overcome the two challenges, we designed and developed a traceability system, DCTracVis. This system employs an approach that combines three supporting techniques, regular expressions, key phrases, and clustering, with information retrieval (IR) models to improve the performance of automated traceability recovery between documents and source code. This combination approach takes advantage of the strengths of the three techniques to ameliorate limitations of IR models. Our experimental results show that our approach improves the performance of IR models, increases the precision of retrieved links, and recovers more correct links than IR alone. After having retrieved high-quality traceability links, DCTracVis then utilizes a new approach that combines treemap and hierarchical tree techniques to reduce visual clutter and to allow the visualization of the global structure of traces and a detailed overview of each trace, while still being highly scalable and interactive. Usability evaluation results show that our approach can effectively and efficiently help software developers comprehend, browse, and maintain large numbers of links.     

Mapping the IEC 62264 models onto the Zachman framework for analysing products information traceability: a case study

In order to face new regulation directives regarding the environment and also for improving their customer relationship, enterprises have to increasingly be more able to manage their product information during the entire lifecycle. One of the objectives among others in this paper is to deal with product traceability along the product lifecycle. To meet this objective, the information system has to be designed and, further built in such a way all information regarding products is recorded. The IEC 62264 standards define generic logical models for exchanging product and process information between business and manufacturing levels of enterprise applications. Thus, it can be a base for product information traceability. However, its complexity comes from the fact it mixes conceptual and implementation details while no methodology exists that defines how to instantiate it. Product traceability is then needed to increase its abstraction level in order to concentrate on its concepts and managing its application by providing a methodology for its instantiation. In this paper, we propose to map the IEC 62264 standard models to a particular view of Zachman framework in order to make the framework concrete as a guideline for applying the standard and for providing the key players in information systems design with a methodology to use the standard for traceability purposes.     

An overview of Dynamic Software Product Line architectures and techniques: Observations from research and industry

Over the last two decades, software product lines have been used successfully in industry for building families of systems of related products, maximizing reuse, and exploiting their variable and configurable options. In a changing world, modern software demands more and more adaptive features, many of them performed dynamically, and the requirements on the software architecture to support adaptation capabilities of systems are increasing in importance. Today, many embedded system families and application domains such as ecosystems, service-based applications, and self-adaptive systems demand runtime capabilities for flexible adaptation, reconfiguration, and post-deployment activities. However, as traditional software product line architectures fail to provide mechanisms for runtime adaptation and behavior of products, there is a shift toward designing more dynamic software architectures and building more adaptable software able to handle autonomous decision-making, according to varying conditions. Recent development approaches such as Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPLs) attempt to face the challenges of the dynamic conditions of such systems but the state of these solution architectures is still immature. In order to provide a more comprehensive treatment of DSPL models and their solution architectures, in this research work we provide an overview of the state of the art and current techniques that, partially, attempt to face the many challenges of runtime variability mechanisms in the context of Dynamic Software Product Lines. We also provide an integrated view of the challenges and solutions that are necessary to support runtime variability mechanisms in DSPL models and software architectures.     

Towards a Subject-Oriented Model-Driven Framework

Model-Driven Architecture is an approach which tackles such problems as: the high availability that a software product requires to be ready for use, the high degree of evolution that a software system has nowadays, etc. However, in the development of large complex systems, the benefits of that approach have been diminished due to the size and complexity of models that describe these kinds of systems. At this point Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) appears to improve the understanding, reusability and adaptation of the software artefacts. Its mechanism is based on modularization of crosscutting concerns in well-identified isolated entities called aspects. For this reason we propose to use together AOSD and MDA in the hope of reducing the shortcomings of the latter. Thus, aspects like security, replication, real-time constraints, etc., will be modelled by specialist modellers independently throughout the MDA framework. Our proposal exploits a tool for checking the consistency between different models (aspects) at the same level of abstraction; supporting the traceability of UML elements, requirements, and concerns; and controlling the impact of changes throughout the MDA framework.     

Software maintenance outsourcing: Issues and strategies

Software maintenance outsourcing is becoming a popular alternative in software industry. Software companies are looking at outsourcing their maintenance and support activities as an area for competitive advantage. There are risks and benefits of introducing subcontractors in the framework of software outsourcing. Reliable maintenance is only possible if adequate measures are taken in advance during project’s development and maintenance planning phase and are documented in the maintenance contract. In this paper, we present and make a justification for a set of recommendations to make such maintenance reliable and cost-effective. We analyze the associated risks and propose some product quality metrics to be monitored during the maintenance phase.     

多层次的软件演化追踪关系逆向恢复

软件资产追踪关系逆向恢复是软件维护和逆向工程领域的一个重要研究内容。然而,大多数现有的资产追踪研究都是针对同一软件版本内的追踪关系。与已有的研究工作不同,文中主要关注多个层次(变更文档层、配置管理层、实现代码层)上的演化信息之间的追踪关系逆向恢复。这些演化信息之间追踪关系的恢复对于理解软件演化和维护过程、学习并借鉴软件维护知识都具有重要的意义。针对不同层次演化信息的特点,提出了一种结合关键字检索和启发式规则的演化信息追踪关系逆向恢复方法,并针对一个开源软件系统的演化过程进行了实验分析。     

Process fusion: An industrial case study on agile software product line engineering

This paper presents a case study of a software product company that has successfully integrated practices from software product line engineering and agile software development. We show how practices from the two fields support the company’s strategic and tactical ambitions, respectively. We also discuss how the company integrates strategic, tactical and operational processes to optimize collaboration and consequently improve its ability to meet market needs, opportunities and challenges. The findings from this study are relevant to software product companies seeking ways to balance agility and product management. The findings also contribute to research on industrializing software engineering.     

基于特征模型的软件产品自动导出方法综述

在针对特定领域的软件复用中,产品导出是主要活动之一.产品导出指的是,开发人员基于领域中可复用的软件制品开发出所需的软件产品.在产品导出过程中,产品导出效率决定了软件复用的收益.在诸多影响产品导出效率的因素中,手工进行产品导出是拉低产品导出效率的主要因素之一,其最终会导致软件复用收益降低.为了提高产品的导出效率,相关研究提出了一些自动导出软件产品的方法.在这些方法中,一种普遍采用的指导思想是基于特征模型自动导出软件产品.在诸多使用该思想进行产品导出的方法中,各方法所使用的实现方式差异很大.为了给基于特征模型自动导出软件产品提供更好的支持,基于现有研究,提出了一个分类框架,并使用该框架对现有基于特征模型自动导出软件产品的方法进行了分类和比较.另外,还进一步指出了现有研究中的不足,并提出解决这些不足的设想.     

Comparisons of optimal release policies for software systems

In a software product management, it is an important problem to determine the optimal release timing which minimizes the total expected cost incurred in both testing and operation phases. In this paper, we compare the performance between two kinds of software release methods, which are referred to as the T-policy and the N-policy. Based on the existing software reliability growth models, we formulate the expected cost functions and derive analytically the optimal policies under these control methods. Also, we derive a criterion for which control methods should be adopted. Finally, in numerical examples, we calculate the optimal release policies for several cost parameters.     

基于软件结构的文档与代码间可追踪性研究

正确建立软件文档与代码间的可追踪关系对程序理解、软件维护等非常重要。近年来,软件文档与代码间的可追踪性研究大多基于文本词汇相似度,没有充分利用软件文档和代码所蕴含的结构信息,针对这一问题提出了将软件结构信息与信息检索模型相结合进行文档与代码间可追踪性分析的方法。通过对文档和代码结构信息的分析,改善预处理效果,优化相似度计算过程,进而提高整体方法的有效性。实验结果表明,该方法比单纯基于信息检索的方法在查全率和查准率上都有所提高,而且能提取到更多的可追踪性链。     

A decision support framework for metrics selection in goal-based measurement programs: GQM-DSFMS

Software organizations face challenges in managing and sustaining their measurement programs over time. The complexity of measurement programs increase with exploding number of goals and metrics to collect. At the same time, organizations usually have limited budget and resources for metrics collection. It has been recognized for quite a while that there is the need for prioritizing goals, which then ought to drive the selection of metrics. On the other hand, the dynamic nature of the organizations requires measurement programs to adapt to the changes in the stakeholders, their goals, information needs and priorities. Therefore, it is crucial for organizations to use structured approaches that provide transparency, traceability and guidance in choosing an optimum set of metrics that would address the highest priority information needs considering limited resources. This paper proposes a decision support framework for metrics selection (DSFMS) which is built upon the widely used Goal Question Metric (GQM) approach. The core of the framework includes an iterative goal-based metrics selection process incorporating decision making mechanisms in metrics selection, a pre-defined Attributes/Metrics Repository, and a Traceability Model among GQM elements. We also discuss alternative prioritization and optimization techniques for organizations to tailor the framework according to their needs. The evaluation of the GQM-DSFMS framework was done through a case study in a CMMI Level 3 software company.