Modeling and Evolving Product Line Architectures using Change Sets and Relationships

Student: Scott A. Hendrickson, UC Irvine/ISR

Collaborator: Swaminathan (Swamy) Subramanian, UC Irvine/ISR

Advisor: Richard N. Taylor, UC Irvine/ISR

Abstract:

The essence of any modeling approach for product line architectures lies in its ability to express variability. Existing approaches do so by explicitly specifying variation points inside the architectural specification of the entire product line, usually with optional and alternative elements of some form. This, however, leads to a sizable mismatch between conceptual variability (i.e., the features through which architects logically view and interpret differences in product architectures) and actual variability (i.e., the modeling constructs through which the logical differences must be expressed). This work contributes a new product line architecture modeling approach that unites the two. This approach uses change sets to group related architectural differences and relationships to govern which change set combinations are valid when composed into a particular product architecture. The result lifts modeling of variability out of modeling architectural structure, consolidates related variation points, and explicitly and separately manages their compatibilities.

Bio:

Scott A. Hendrickson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Informatics at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He has been a Research Intern at The Aerospace Corporation. His research interests lie in the area of modeling and evolving software product line architectures.

Swaminathan Subramanian is a Masters Student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. He previously worked for Oracle Corporation as an Applications Engineer. His research interests focus on the development of tools and technologies that help manage the evolution of a Software Product.