(Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), 2011-03-24) Heradio Gil, Rubén; Fernández Amoros, David José; Cerrada Somolinos, José Antonio; Cerrada Somolinos, Carlos
Software Product Line (SPL) engineering is a cost effective approach to developing families of similar products. Key to the success of this approach is to correctly scope the domain of the SPL, identifying the common and variable features of the products and the interdependencies between features. In this paper, we show how the commonality of a feature (i.e., the reuse ratio of the feature among the products) can be used to detect scope flaws in the early stages of development. SPL domains are usually modeled by means of feature diagrams following the FODA notation. We extend classical FODA trees with unrestricted cardinalities, and present an algorithm to compute the number of products modeled by a feature diagram and the commonality of the features. Finally, we compare the performance of our algorithm with two other approaches built on top of boolean logic SAT-solver technology such as cachet and relsat.
