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Reengineering Variants of MATLAB/Simulink Software Systems

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Security and Quality in Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering

Abstract

In a variety of industrial domains, quality and security are paramount factors during software system development. Model-based languages such as MATLAB/Simulink can improve software quality and are used for the development of safety-critical functionality. To comply with changing customer demands, product portfolios oftentimes emerge ad hoc by copying and modifying existing systems in an undocumented fashion. The proliferation of redundant, almost alike assets adversely affects the quality, maintenance, and evolution of the variant portfolio. To reinstate sustainable development, we describe a holistic approach to migrate the portfolio toward managed reuse by collapsing redundant parts and reengineering specific relations between similar, almost alike system parts. We elaborate on a technique to capture course-grained variability by assessing the portfolio as a whole, which identifies and groups together similar and redundant system parts. Such groups are analyzed further using a fine-grained comparison procedure, which captures their variability by means of common and varying system assets. The result is a variability model with redundant parts collapsed and reusable parts identified. By that, the overall size of the product portfolio is reduced, allowing for better quality assurance and improved maintenance. Furthermore, with knowledge about the relations between variants, affected software systems can be identified across variant boundaries, mitigating security concerns for the entire product portfolio.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (SCHA 1635/12-1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    Alexander Schlie, Christoph Seidl & Ina Schaefer

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  1. Alexander Schlie
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  2. Christoph Seidl
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  3. Ina Schaefer
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Correspondence to Alexander Schlie .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Information Systems Engineering, Technische Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Stefan Biffl

  2. Institute of Information Systems Engineering, Technische Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Matthias Eckhart

  3. Institute of Ergonomics, Manufacturing Systems and Automation, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

    Arndt Lüder

  4. Institute of Information Systems Engineering, Technische Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Edgar Weippl

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Schlie, A., Seidl, C., Schaefer, I. (2019). Reengineering Variants of MATLAB/Simulink Software Systems. In: Biffl, S., Eckhart, M., Lüder, A., Weippl, E. (eds) Security and Quality in Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25312-7_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25312-7_10

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-25312-7

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