Algebraic Treatment of Feature-oriented Systems

Abstract

An important aspect of the feature interaction problem is to formally capture the notion of feature interactions. Although this notion is quite well informally understood by the researchers of the domain, the way, they handle it, strongly depends on the field of investigation they decide to work on (formal method application, architectural conception, technological research ... ). In this article, we focus on how formally specifying and studying feature systems, and both integration and interaction of features. More precisely, we aim to give a logic-independent framework to deal with the notions of feature, feature-based systems and feature interactions. Then, to help the reader’s intuition, we instantiate it by a dynamic algebraic formalism and we give concrete examples of interactions between two features previously described in this formalism.