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On Language Levels for Feature Modeling Notations

Published: 09 September 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Configuration is a key enabling technology for the engineering of systems and software as wells as physical goods. A selection of configuration options (aka. features) is often enough to automatically generate a product tailored to the needs of a customer. It is common that not all combinations of features are possible in a given domain. Feature modeling is the de-facto standard for specifying features and their valid combinations. However, a pivotal hurdle for practitioners, researchers, and teachers in applying feature modeling is that there are hundreds of tools and languages available. While there have been first attempts to define a standard feature modeling language, they still struggle with finding an appropriate level of expressiveness. If the expressiveness is too high, the language will not be adopted, as it is too much effort to support all language constructs. If the expressiveness is too low, the language will not be adopted, as many interesting domains cannot be modeled in such a language. Towards a standard feature modeling notation, we propose the use of language levels with different expressiveness each and discuss criteria to be used to define such language levels. We aim to raise the awareness on the expressiveness and eventually contribute to a standard feature modeling notation.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
SPLC '19: Proceedings of the 23rd International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume B
September 2019
252 pages
ISBN:9781450366687
DOI:10.1145/3307630
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 09 September 2019

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Author Tags

  1. automated analysis
  2. expressiveness
  3. feature model
  4. language design
  5. product lines
  6. variability modeling

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  • (2023)Dynamic Product Configuration User Interface: A Vision Motivated by the Cyber-Physical Production Systems DomainProceedings of the 17th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems10.1145/3571788.3571803(88-90)Online publication date: 25-Jan-2023
  • (2023)A modular metamodel and refactoring rules to achieve software product line interoperabilityJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2022.111579197:COnline publication date: 1-Mar-2023
  • (2022)Fifth International Workshop on Languages for Modelling Variability (MODEVAR@SPLC 2022)Proceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3546932.3547075(264-264)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2022
  • (2022)It's your lossProceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3546932.3546990(67-78)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2022
  • (2021)Integration of UVL in FeatureIDEProceedings of the 25th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume B10.1145/3461002.3473940(73-79)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2021
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  • (2021)Yet another textual variability language?Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A10.1145/3461001.3471145(136-147)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2021
  • (2021)TRAVART: An Approach for Transforming Variability ModelsProceedings of the 15th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems10.1145/3442391.3442400(1-10)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2021
  • (2020)Extensible and modular abstract syntax for feature modeling based on language constructsProceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Systems and Software Product Line: Volume A - Volume A10.1145/3382025.3414959(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2020
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