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Feature Interaction and Dependencies: Modeling Features for Reengineering a Legacy Product Line

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Book cover Software Product Lines (SPLC 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2379))

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Abstract

Reengineering a legacy product line has been addressed very little by current product line research activities. This paper introduces a method to investigate feature dependencies and interactions, which restricts the variants that can be derived from the legacy product line assets. Reorganizing the product line assets with respect to new requirements requires more knowledge than what is easily provided by the classical feature-modeling approaches. Hence, adding all the feature dependencies and interactions into the feature tree results in unreadable and unmanageable feature models that fail to achieve their original goals.

We therefore propose two complementary views to represent the feature model. One view shows the hierarchical refinement of features similar to common feature-modeling approaches in a feature tree. The second view describes what kind of dependencies and interactions there are between various features.

We show two examples of feature dependencies and interactions in the context of an engine-control software product line, and we demonstrate how our approach helps to define correct product configurations from product line variants.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Corporate Research and Development FV/SLD, Robert Bosch GmbH, Eschborner Landstraße 130-132, D-60489, Frankfurt, Germany

    Stefan Ferber

  2. Gasoline Systems GS/ESK, Robert Bosch GmbH, P.O. Box 30 02 40, D-70442, Stuttgart, Germany

    Jürgen Haag

  3. NOKIA GROUP, Nokia Research Center, P.O. Box 407, FIN-00045, Finland

    Juha Savolainen

Authors
  1. Stefan Ferber
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  2. Jürgen Haag
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  3. Juha Savolainen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 4500 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Gary J. Chastek

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ferber, S., Haag, J., Savolainen, J. (2002). Feature Interaction and Dependencies: Modeling Features for Reengineering a Legacy Product Line. In: Chastek, G.J. (eds) Software Product Lines. SPLC 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2379. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45652-X_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45652-X_15

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43985-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45652-0

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