Automated analysis of feature models 20 years later: A literature review

By David Benavides, Sergio Segura, Antonio Ruiz-Cortés. Information Systems, 2010

1,297 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Software product line engineering is about producing a set of related products that share more commonalities than variabilities. Feature models are widely used for variability and commonality management in software product lines. Feature models are information models where a set of products are represented as a set of features in a single model. The automated analysis of feature models deals with the computer-aided extraction of information from feature models. The literature on this topic has contributed with a set of operations, techniques, tools and empirical results which have not been surveyed until now. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review on the automated analysis of feature models 20 years after of their invention. This paper contributes by bringing together previously disparate streams of work to help shed light on this thriving area. We also present a conceptual framework to understand the different proposals as well as categorise future contributions. We finally discuss the different studies and propose some challenges to be faced in the future.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Information Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c62fdbfc2baa5dd3e9ab2ac55153dfc9553dda0

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Citations in the corpus

A Survey on Metamorphic Testing (2016, result): “A similar approach was followed by some of the authors in the context of software product lines [23].”
Cool features and tough decisions: a comparison of variability modeling approaches (2012, background): “Several papers compare FM approaches from different viewpoints [19] [61] [12].”
Reverse engineering feature models (2011, background): “Feature models oﬀer a range of beneﬁts from enabling automated analysis for verifying and resolving product line consistency to generating graphical conﬁgurators that guide users through the conﬁguration process [5].”
A Classification and Survey of Analysis Strategies for Software Product Lines (2014, methodology): “…focus only on testing are outside the scope of this article; we refer the reader to dedicated surveys on feature-model analysis [Janota et al. 2008; Benavides et al. 2010] and on product-line testing [Tevanlinna et al. 2004; Engström and Runeson 2011; Da Mota Silveira Neto et al. 2011; Oster et…”