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On the Ontological Expressiveness of the High-Level Constraint Language for Product Line Specification

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System Analysis and Modeling. Languages, Methods, and Tools for Systems Engineering (SAM 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 11150))

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Abstract

The High-Level Constraint Language (HLCL) consolidates the constraints scattered in several product line notations in an abstract and technologically independent language. Previous research has demonstrated that HLCL is suitable to represent most product line constraints from a practical point of view. However, the question about to what extent the HLCL is able to represent product line variability is still open. In this study, we refer to the ontological expressiveness theory to answer this question and to evaluate how well HLCL can represent the state of affairs for which it is proposed. Therefore, this evaluation considers HLCL’s ontological expressiveness regarding its completeness and clarity. Our results show that (1) HLCL closely represents the concepts in the ontological framework. However, some variability concepts should be integrated for obtaining a 100% level of completeness. (2) HLCL’s high level of abstraction impacts its clarity. The discussion of the research presented in this paper opens the perspectives to build a constraint-based language for product line engineering.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, 75013, Paris, France

    Angela Villota, Raúl Mazo & Camille Salinesi

  2. Universidad Icesi, Calle 18 No. 122–135, Cali, Colombia

    Angela Villota

  3. Universidad EAFIT, GIDITIC, Medellín, Colombia

    Raúl Mazo

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  1. Angela Villota
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  2. Raúl Mazo
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  3. Camille Salinesi
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Correspondence to Angela Villota .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Ferhat Khendek

  2. University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Reinhard Gotzhein

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Villota, A., Mazo, R., Salinesi, C. (2018). On the Ontological Expressiveness of the High-Level Constraint Language for Product Line Specification. In: Khendek, F., Gotzhein, R. (eds) System Analysis and Modeling. Languages, Methods, and Tools for Systems Engineering. SAM 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11150. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01042-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01042-3_4

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01042-3

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