Feature Modelling Tool
Feature Modelling Tool (FMT)
A Software Product Line (SPL) refers to a set of related products built from a shared set of resources having a common base [1]. Further members of the product line are built by reusing existing core components and adding extra functionality. SPLs provide the benefits of reusability in reducing the time to market, lower costs and reduce effort involved in product development. Feature modelling [2] is a well known technique for building SPLs. It has been used in many domains, product line projects and organizations where a feature (usually written in a programming language) is the unit of reuse, specialization and composition. It provides ways to manage variabilites and commonalities within a product line. Feature modelling was suggested as part of the Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA) [3] in the early 90’s and several tools have been developed to support feature modelling for SPL engineering [2].
We have developed a feature modelling tool (FMT), as a Rodin plug-in, which can be used to build feature models. Feature models are used to specify a product line and are represented using tree-structured feature diagrams. These include variability among the product line members and the ways in which these feature models can be instantiated to generate the product line members.
References:
[1] P. Clements and L. Northrop, Software Product Lines : Practices and Patterns. Addison-Wesley Professional, August 2001. [Online]. Available: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/redirect? tag=citeulike09-20n&path=ASIN/0201703327
[2] K. Lee, K. C. Kang, and J. Lee, “Concepts and guidelines of feature modeling for product line software engineering,” in ICSR-7: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Software Reuse. London, UK: Springer-Verlag, 2002, pp. 62–77.
[3] K. Kang, S. Cohen, J. Hess, W. Nowak, and S. Peterson, “Feature-oriented domain analysis (foda) feasibility study.” Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tech. Rep., 1990.
Ali Gondal at Southampton is working on the Feature Modelling Tool.
