基于复用的软件产品线工程关键技术研究

软件复用技术在软件工程领域具有重要作用并且被广泛应用,尤其是在软件产品线工程领域,系统化的软件复用技术为软件产品线的设计和实现提供了基础。论文首先详细阐述了具有代表性的系统化软件复用支撑技术,随后在一个通用的软件产品线参考架构的基础上,探讨了复用技术在软件产品线工程领域的主要应用形式,最后针对可变性定义及其管理问题,引人并着重探讨了三种可变性管理模型及技术。     

Variability extraction and modeling for product variants

Fast-changing hardware and software technologies in addition to larger and more specialized customer bases demand software tailored to meet very diverse requirements. Software development approaches that aim at capturing this diversity on a single consolidated platform often require large upfront investments, e.g., time or budget. Alternatively, companies resort to developing one variant of a software product at a time by reusing as much as possible from already-existing product variants. However, identifying and extracting the parts to reuse is an error-prone and inefficient task compounded by the typically large number of product variants. Hence, more disciplined and systematic approaches are needed to cope with the complexity of developing and maintaining sets of product variants. Such approaches require detailed information about the product variants, the features they provide and their relations. In this paper, we present an approach to extract such variability information from product variants. It identifies traces from features and feature interactions to their implementation artifacts, and computes their dependencies. This work can be useful in many scenarios ranging from ad hoc development approaches such as clone-and-own to systematic reuse approaches such as software product lines. We applied our variability extraction approach to six case studies and provide a detailed evaluation. The results show that the extracted variability information is consistent with the variability in our six case study systems given by their variability models and available product variants.     

The software product line architecture: An empirical investigation of key process activities

Software architecture has been a key area of concern in software industry due to its profound impact on the productivity and quality of software products. This is even more crucial in case of software product line, because it deals with the development of a line of products sharing common architecture and having controlled variability. The main contributions of this paper is to increase the understanding of the influence of key software product line architecture process activities on the overall performance of software product line by conducting a comprehensive empirical investigation covering a broad range of organizations currently involved in the business of software product lines. This is the first study to empirically investigate and demonstrate the relationships between some of the software product line architecture process activities and the overall software product line performance of an organization at the best of our knowledge. The results of this investigation provide empirical evidence that software product line architecture process activities play a significant role in successfully developing and managing a software product line.     

控制系统组态软件的现状与发展

本文阐述了控制系统组态软件的优点，重点介绍，比较几种功能强大的控制组态软件产品，并分析了当前工控组态软件的现状与发展趋势，为开发适合我国国情的组态软件提供思路。     

Automating Test Case Selection in Model-Based Software Product Line Development

We address the problem of how to select test cases for products in a controlled model-based software product line development process. CVL, the common variability language, gives a framework for materialisation of product models from a given base model, variability model and resolution model. From such product models, software products can be derived. In practise, test case development for the product line often is independent from the product development. Therefore, the problem arises which test cases can be applied to which products. In particular, the question is whether a test case for one speci c product can be also used for a "similar" product. In this paper, we show how the expected outcome of a test case to a product in a model-based software product line development can be determined. That is, we give a procedure for assigning the outcome of a given test case on an arbitrary member of a software product line. We recall the relevant de nitions for software product line engineering, describe our approach, and demonstrate it with the example of a product line of super-automatic espresso machines.     

一种基于UML的软件产品线可变性建模方法

将UML引入到软件产品线开发中,在产品线可变性分析的基础上,提出了一种基于UML的产品线可变性建模方法。该方法不仅支持可选、多选一等可变点类型的描述,还支持软件产品线可变性的约束建模。在此基础上,还通过一个手机应用软件的产品线可变性建模实例验证了该方法的有效性。     

Measurement as an alternative to bureaucracy for the achievement of software quality

In this paper we discuss the two dominant modes of thought on the problem of software quality: the bureaucratic approach and the technical approach. The aim of the paper is to pursue the issues of how these approaches affect people, in our case software developers, and how we can assess the effectiveness of each approach in actually achieving quality software. An outline of the main aspects of the organizational approach — process modelling and software standards — is given. In order to address the effects of each of these modes of thought on people we take a psychological perspective. The implications for software engineering, in terms of formalism and mechanization, are discussed. The paper argues that overzealous structure, control and automation can negatively affect the creative process of developing software. A perspective on each of the components of the technical approach in terms of their effectiveness in achieving quality objectives is provided. From recent work we find that process modelling and many software standards do not provide an adequate assessment of the benefits derived from their application. The paper argues that measurement goes some way to addressing these problems. Measurement should form the core of the software development process, especially with respect to product quality assessment. The main conclusion is that by focusing on measurable objectives and results we can best achieve quality software products and highlight the processes which are likely to create them in a repeatable and manageable fashion. Additionally, by adopting measurement in practice we should expect to increase the freedom and creativity of software developers.     

Software reliability from the customer view

We augment our defect-prevention activities with analyses of what our customers experience - software failures. NED provides a suite of hardware and software products for business-critical applications, including the operating system, database management system, communication protocols, transaction monitors, and application-development tools. We update this suite quarterly in a release version update. An RVU is an aggregation of all product changes plus the previous version of all unchanged products, which totals several million lines of code. We track the failure rates for each RVU so that we can measure the customer experience with that update. We have been analyzing software failure data for the past several years to provide feedback on the effectiveness of our defect-prevention activities.     

Scalable prediction of non-functional properties in software product lines: Footprint and memory consumption

ContextA software product line is a family of related software products, typically created from a set of common assets. Users select features to derive a product that fulfills their needs. Users often expect a product to have specific non-functional properties, such as a small footprint or a bounded response time. Because a product line may have an exponential number of products with respect to its features, it is usually not feasible to generate and measure non-functional properties for each possible product.ObjectiveOur overall goal is to derive optimal products with respect to non-functional requirements by showing customers which features must be selected.MethodWe propose an approach to predict a product’s non-functional properties based on the product’s feature selection. We aggregate the influence of each selected feature on a non-functional property to predict a product’s properties. We generate and measure a small set of products and, by comparing measurements, we approximate each feature’s influence on the non-functional property in question. As a research method, we conducted controlled experiments and evaluated prediction accuracy for the non-functional properties footprint and main-memory consumption. But, in principle, our approach is applicable for all quantifiable non-functional properties.ResultsWith nine software product lines, we demonstrate that our approach predicts the footprint with an average accuracy of 94%, and an accuracy of over 99% on average if feature interactions are known. In a further series of experiments, we predicted main memory consumption of six customizable programs and achieved an accuracy of 89% on average.ConclusionOur experiments suggest that, with only few measurements, it is possible to accurately predict non-functional properties of products of a product line. Furthermore, we show how already little domain knowledge can improve predictions and discuss trade-offs between accuracy and required number of measurements. With this technique, we provide a basis for many reasoning and product-derivation approaches.     

An optimization framework for “build-or-buy” decisions in software architecture

Building a software architecture that meets functional requirements is a quite consolidated activity, whereas keeping high quality attributes is still an open challenge. In this paper we introduce an optimization framework that supports the decision whether to buy software components or to build them in-house upon designing a software architecture. We devise a non-linear cost/quality optimization model based on decision variables indicating the set of architectural components to buy and to build in order to minimize the software cost while keeping satisfactory values of quality attributes. From this point of view, our tool can be ideally embedded into a Cost Benefit Analysis Method to provide decision support to software architects. The novelty of our approach consists in building costs and quality attributes on a common set of decision variables related to software development. We start from a special case of the framework where the quality constraints are related to the delivery time and the product reliability, and the model solution also devises the amount of unit testing to be performed on built components. We generalize the framework formulation to represent a broader class of architectural cost-minimization problems under quality constraints, and discuss advantages and limitations of such approach.     

Increasing product owners’ cognition and decision-making capabilities by data analysis approach

Cognition, Technology & Work - In this paper, we focus on the innovative advanced data analysis dedicated for product owners in software development teams. The goal of our novel solutions is to...     

Empirical Analysis of Software Fault Content and Fault Proneness Using Bayesian Methods

We present a methodology for Bayesian analysis of software quality. We cast our research in the broader context of constructing a causal framework that can include process, product, and other diverse sources of information regarding fault introduction during the software development process. In this paper, we discuss the aspect of relating internal product metrics to external quality metrics. Specifically, we build a Bayesian network (BN) model to relate object-oriented software metrics to software fault content and fault proneness. Assuming that the relationship can be described as a generalized linear model, we derive parametric functional forms for the target node conditional distributions in the BN. These functional forms are shown to be able to represent linear, Poisson, and binomial logistic regression. The models are empirically evaluated using a public domain data set from a software subsystem. The results show that our approach produces statistically significant estimations and that our overall modeling method performs no worse than existing techniques.     

What can software engineers learn from manufacturing to improve software process and product?

The purpose of this paper is to provide the software engineer with tools from the field of manufacturing as an aid to improving software process and product quality. Process involves classical manufacturing methods, such as statistical quality control applied to product testing, which is designed to monitor and correct the process when the process yields product quality that fails to meet specifications. Product quality is measured by metrics, such as failure count occurring on software during testing. When the process and product quality are out of control, we show what remedial action to take to bring both the process and product under control. NASA Space Shuttle failure data are used to illustrate the process methods.     

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.     

Structuring product family requirements for<Emphasis Type="Italic"> n</Emphasis>-dimensional and hierarchical product lines

The software product-line approach (for software product families) is one of the success stories of software reuse. When applied, it can result in cost savings and increases in productivity. In addition, in safety-critical systems the approach has the potential for reuse of analysis and testing results, which can lead to a safer system. Nevertheless, there are times when it seems like a product family approach should work when, in fact, there are difficulties in properly defining the boundaries of the product family. In this paper, we draw on our experiences in applying the software product-line approach to a family of mobile robots, a family of flight guidance systems, and a family of cardiac pacemakers, as well as case studies done by others to (1) illustrate how domain structure can currently limit applicability of product-line approaches to certain domains and (2) demonstrate our progress towards a solution using a set-theoretic approach to reason about domains of what we call n-dimensional and hierarchical product families.     

Decision-making coordination and efficient reasoning techniques for feature-based configuration

Software Product Lines is a contemporary approach to software development that exploits the similarities and differences within a family of systems in a particular domain of interest in order to provide a common infrastructure for deriving members of this family in a timely fashion, with high-quality standards, and at lower costs.In Software Product Lines, feature-based product configuration is the process of selecting the desired features for a given software product from a repository of features called a feature model. This process is usually carried out collaboratively by people with distinct skills and interests called stakeholders. Collaboration benefits stakeholders by allowing them to directly intervene in the configuration process. However, collaboration also raises an important side effect, i.e., the need of stakeholders to cope with decision conflicts. Conflicts arise when decisions that are locally consistent cannot be applied globally because they violate one or more constraints in the feature model.Unfortunately, current product configuration systems are typically single-user-based in the sense that they do not provide means to coordinate concurrent decision-making on the feature model. As a consequence, configuration is carried out by a single person that is in charge of representing the interests of all stakeholders and managing decision conflicts on their own. This results in an error-prone and time-consuming process that requires past decisions to be revisited continuously either to correct misinterpreted stakeholder requirements or to handle decision conflicts. Yet another challenging issue related to configuration problems is the typically high computational cost of configuration algorithms. In fact, these algorithms frequently fall into the category of NP-hard and thus can become intractable in practice.In this paper, our goal is two-fold. First, we revisit our work on Collaborative Product Configuration (CPC) in which we proposed an approach to describe and validate collaborative configuration scenarios. We discuss how collaborative configuration can be described in terms of a workflow-like plan that safely guides stakeholders during the configuration process. Second, we propose a preliminary set of reasoning algorithms tailored to the feature modelling domain that can be used to provide automated support for product configuration. In addition, we compare empirically the performance of the proposed algorithms to that of a general-purpose solution. We hope that the insights provided in this paper will encourage other researchers to develop new algorithms in the near future.     

A history-based cost-cognizant test case prioritization technique in regression testing

Software testing is typically used to verify whether the developed software product meets its requirements. From the result of software testing, developers can make an assessment about the quality or the acceptability of developed software. It is noted that during testing, the test case is a pair of input and expected output, and a number of test cases will be executed either sequentially or randomly. The techniques of test case prioritization usually schedule test cases for regression testing in an order that attempts to increase the effectiveness. However, the cost of test cases and the severity of faults are usually varied. In this paper, we propose a method of cost-cognizant test case prioritization based on the use of historical records. We gather the historical records from the latest regression testing and then propose a genetic algorithm to determine the most effective order. Some controlled experiments are performed to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed method. Evaluation results indicate that our proposed method has improved the fault detection effectiveness. It can also been found that prioritizing test cases based on their historical information can provide high test effectiveness during testing.     

A model-driven approach for the derivation of architectural requirements of software product lines

The alignment of the software architecture and the functional requirements of a system is a demanding task because of the difficulty in tracing design elements to requirements. The four-step rule set (4SRS) is a unified modeling language (UML)-based model-driven method for single system development which provides support to the software architect in this task. This paper presents an evolution of the 4SRS method aimed at software product lines. In particular, we describe how to address the transformation of functional requirements (use cases) into component-based requirements for the product line architecture. The result is a UML-based model-driven method that can be applied in combination with metamodeling tools such as the eclipse modeling framework (EMF) to derive the architecture of software product lines. We present our approach in a practical way and illustrate it with an example. We also discuss how our proposals are related to the work of other authors.     

浅谈软件质量度量和软件产品评价

软件质量度量和软件产品评价系列标准是国际标准化组织ISO／IEC JTC1近年来在软件工程标准方面的研究重点之一,对于通过量化手段进行软件产品的度量和评价,规范软件产品的质量管理,这两个系列标准提供了一条可以参考的实施途径。本文在多年跟踪研究国际上软件工程标准和制定软件工程国家标准的基础上,对ISO／IEC JTC1近年推出的ISO／IEC 9126和ISO／IEC 14598系列,以及正在研制的ISO／IEC 25000系列标准进行综合介绍。     

A formal framework for software product lines

ContextA Software Product Line is a set of software systems that are built from a common set of features. These systems are developed in a prescribed way and they can be adapted to fit the needs of customers. Feature models specify the properties of the systems that are meaningful to customers. A semantics that models the feature level has the potential to support the automatic analysis of entire software product lines.ObjectiveThe objective of this paper is to define a formal framework for Software Product Lines. This framework needs to be general enough to provide a formal semantics for existing frameworks like FODA (Feature Oriented Domain Analysis), but also to be easily adaptable to new problems.MethodWe define an algebraic language, called SPLA, to describe Software Product Lines. We provide the semantics for the algebra in three different ways. The approach followed to give the semantics is inspired by the semantics of process algebras. First we define an operational semantics, next a denotational semantics, and finally an axiomatic semantics. We also have defined a representation of the algebra into propositional logic.ResultsWe prove that the three semantics are equivalent. We also show how FODA diagrams can be automatically translated into SPLA. Furthermore, we have developed our tool, called AT, that implements the formal framework presented in this paper. This tool uses a SAT-solver to check the satisfiability of an SPL.ConclusionThis paper defines a general formal framework for software product lines. We have defined three different semantics that are equivalent; this means that depending on the context we can choose the most convenient approach: operational, denotational or axiomatic. The framework is flexible enough because it is closely related to process algebras. Process algebras are a well-known paradigm for which many extensions have been defined.