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Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering pp 319–333Cite as

Quality Assurance in the Presence of Variability

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Abstract

Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) is a reuse-driven development paradigm that has been applied successfully in information system engineering and other domains. Quality assurance of the reusable artifacts of the product line (e.g. requirements, design, and code artifacts) is essential for successful product line engineering. As those artifacts are reused in several products, a defect in a reusable artifact can affect several products of the product line. A central challenge for quality assurance in product line engineering is how to consider product line variability. Since the reusable artifacts contain variability, quality assurance techniques from single-system engineering cannot directly be applied to those artifacts. Therefore, different strategies and techniques have been developed for quality assurance in the presence of variability. In this chapter, we describe those strategies and discuss in more detail one of those strategies, the so called comprehensive strategy. The comprehensive strategy aims at checking the quality of all possible products of the product line and thus offers the highest benefits, since it is able to uncover defects in all possible products of the product line. However, the central challenge for applying the comprehensive strategy is the complexity that results from the product line variability and the large number of potential products of a product line. In this chapter, we present one concrete technique that we have developed to implement the comprehensive strategy that addresses this challenge. The technique is based on model checking technology and allows for a comprehensive verification of domain artifacts against temporal logic properties.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    (Ti) denotes the power set of Ti.

  2. 2.

    The function SAT-VM(OVM, V ′) checks whether there is a selection of variants that fulfils the variability OVM and the selection of variants V ′.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been partially funded by the DFG under grant PO 607/2-1 IST-SPL. We would like to thank Ernst Sikora and Nelufar Ulfat-Bunyadi for fruitful discussions on earlier drafts of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Systems Engineering, University of Duisburg-Essen, Gerlingstraße 16, 45127, Essen, Germany

    Kim Lauenroth & Andreas Metzger

  2. Software Systems Engineering, University of Duisburg-Essen, Schützenbahn 70, 45127, Essen, Germany

    Klaus Pohl

Authors
  1. Kim Lauenroth
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  2. Andreas Metzger
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  3. Klaus Pohl
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kim Lauenroth .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , IAE de Paris, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, rue Broca 21, Paris, 75005, France

    Selmin Nurcan

  2. Centre de Recherche en Informatique, Université Paris 1, Paris, 75013, France

    Camille Salinesi

  3. , Centre PMF, Université Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne, rue de Tolbiac 90, Paris, 75013, France

    Carine Souveyet

  4. , Department of Information Systems, University of Geneva, route de Drize 7, Carouge, 1227, Switzerland

    Jolita Ralyté

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Lauenroth, K., Metzger, A., Pohl, K. (2010). Quality Assurance in the Presence of Variability. In: Nurcan, S., Salinesi, C., Souveyet, C., Ralyté, J. (eds) Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12544-7_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12544-7_18

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