Have Variability Tools Fulfilled the Needs of the Software Industry?

Autor(es)

Allian, Ana Paula ^{[1, 2]} ; OliveiraJr, Edson ; Capilla, Rafael ^[3] ; Nakagawa, Elisa Yumi ^[2]

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Univ Estadual Maringa, Maringa, Parana - Brazil

^[2] Univ Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos - Brazil

^[3] Rey Juan Carlos Univ, Madrid - Spain

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: JOURNAL OF UNIVERSAL COMPUTER SCIENCE; v. 26, n. 10, p. 1282-1311, 2020.
• Citações Web of Science: 0

Resumo

For nearly 30 years, industry and researchers have proposed many software variability tools to cope with the complexity of modeling variability in software development, followed by a number of publications on variability techniques built upon theoretical foundations. After more than 25 years of the practice of software variability, there are not many studies investigating the impact of software variability tools in the industry and the perception of practitioners. For this reason, we investigate in this research work how existing software variability tools fulfill the needs of companies demanding this kind of tool support. We conducted a survey with practitioners from companies in eight different countries in order to analyze the missing capabilities of software variability management tools and we compared the results of the survey with the scientific literature through a systematic mapping study (SMS) to analyze if the proposed solutions cover the needs required by practitioners. Our major findings indicate that many tools lack important qualities such as interoperability, collaborative work, code generation, scalability, impact analysis, and test; while the results from the SMS showed these such capabilities are, to some extent, found in some of the existing tools. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 17/06195-9 - RASoS: construção de arquiteturas de referência de sistemas-de-sistemas
• Beneficiário: Elisa Yumi Nakagawa
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Regular
• Processo FAPESP: 18/20882-1 - Gerenciamento de Variabilidade em Arquiteturas de Referências
• Beneficiário: Ana Paula Allian
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Exterior - Estágio de Pesquisa - Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 19/19730-5 - Arquiteturas de referência na engenharia contínua de sistemas e software
• Beneficiário: Elisa Yumi Nakagawa
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Exterior - Pesquisa
• Processo FAPESP: 16/05919-0 - Gerenciamento de variabilidade em arquiteturas de referência
• Beneficiário: Ana Paula Allian
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Doutorado