JSW 2008 Vol.3(2): 69-82 ISSN: 1796-217X
doi: 10.4304/jsw.3.2.69-82
doi: 10.4304/jsw.3.2.69-82
Collaborative Product Configuration: Formalization and Efficient Algorithms for Dependency Analysis
Marcílio Mendonça1, Donald Cowan1, William Malyk1, Toacy Oliveira2
1David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
2Departamento de Informática, PUC-RS, Rio Grande do Sul, RS, Brazil
Abstract—In the Software Product Line approach, product configuration is a key activity in which stakeholders choose features for a product. This activity is critical in the sense that careless feature selections might lead to undesirable products. Even though product configuration is seen as a team activity in which divergent interests and views are merged into a single consistent product specification, current configuration technology is essentially single-userbased. This configuration approach can be error-prone and time-consuming as it usually requires numerous interactions between the product manager and the stakeholders to resolve decision conflicts. To tackle this problem we have proposed an approach called “Collaborative Product Configuration” (CPC). In this paper, we extend the CPC approach by providing efficient dependency analysis algorithms to support the validation of workflow-based descriptions called CPC plans. In addition, we add to previous work by providing a formal description of the approach’s concepts, an augmented illustrated example, and a discussion covering several prototype tools now available.
Index Terms—Software Product Lines, Collaborative Product Configuration, Feature Models, Dependency Analysis Algorithms, Logics in Product Lines.
2Departamento de Informática, PUC-RS, Rio Grande do Sul, RS, Brazil
Abstract—In the Software Product Line approach, product configuration is a key activity in which stakeholders choose features for a product. This activity is critical in the sense that careless feature selections might lead to undesirable products. Even though product configuration is seen as a team activity in which divergent interests and views are merged into a single consistent product specification, current configuration technology is essentially single-userbased. This configuration approach can be error-prone and time-consuming as it usually requires numerous interactions between the product manager and the stakeholders to resolve decision conflicts. To tackle this problem we have proposed an approach called “Collaborative Product Configuration” (CPC). In this paper, we extend the CPC approach by providing efficient dependency analysis algorithms to support the validation of workflow-based descriptions called CPC plans. In addition, we add to previous work by providing a formal description of the approach’s concepts, an augmented illustrated example, and a discussion covering several prototype tools now available.
Index Terms—Software Product Lines, Collaborative Product Configuration, Feature Models, Dependency Analysis Algorithms, Logics in Product Lines.
Cite: Marcílio Mendonça, Donald Cowan, William Malyk, Toacy Oliveira, " Collaborative Product Configuration: Formalization and Efficient Algorithms for Dependency Analysis," Journal of Software vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 69-82, 2008.
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General Information
ISSN: 1796-217X (Online)
Frequency: Quarterly
Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Antanas Verikas
Executive Editor: Ms. Yoyo Y. Zhou
Abstracting/ Indexing: DBLP, EBSCO, CNKI, Google Scholar, ProQuest, INSPEC(IET), ULRICH's Periodicals Directory, WorldCat, etc
E-mail: jsw@iap.org
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