research-article

Comprehensibility of orthogonal variability modeling languages: the cases of CVL and OVM

Authors:

Iris Reinhartz-Berger,

Kathrin FiglAuthors Info & Claims

SPLC '14: Proceedings of the 18th International Software Product Line Conference - Volume 1

Pages 42 - 51

https://doi.org/10.1145/2648511.2648516

Published: 15 September 2014 Publication History

Abstract

As the complexity and variety of systems and software products have increased, the ability to manage their variability effectively and efficiently became crucial. To this end, variability can be specified either as an integral part of the development artifacts or in a separate orthogonal variability model. Lately, orthogonal variability models attract a lot of attention due to the fact that they do not require changing the complexity of the development artifacts and can be used in conjunction with different development artifacts. Despite this attention and to the best of our knowledge, no empirical study examined the comprehensibility of orthogonal variability models.

In this work, we conducted an exploratory experiment to examine potential comprehension problems in two common orthogonal variability modeling languages, namely, Common Variability Language (CVL) and Orthogonal Variability Model (OVM). We examined the comprehensibility of the variability models and their relations to the development artifacts for novice users. To measure comprehensibility we used comprehension score (i.e., percentage of correct solution), time spent to complete tasks, and participants' perception of difficulty of different model constructs. The results showed high comprehensibility of the variability models, but low comprehensibility of the relations between the variability models and the development artifacts. Although the comprehensibility of CVL and OVM was similar in terms of comprehension score and time spent to complete tasks, novice users perceived OVM as more difficult to comprehend.

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Cited By

Chacón-Luna AGutiérrez AGalindo JBenavides D(2020)Empirical software product line engineeringInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2020.106389128:COnline publication date: 1-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2020.106389
Leserf Pde Saqui-Sannes PHugues J(2019)Trade-off analysis for SysML models using decision points and CSPsSoftware & Systems Modeling10.1007/s10270-019-00717-0Online publication date: 20-Jan-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-019-00717-0
Echeverría J(2017)Research on Augmenting the MDD Process with Variability ModelingACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/3011286.301130241:6(1-6)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3011286.3011302
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Index Terms

Comprehensibility of orthogonal variability modeling languages: the cases of CVL and OVM
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Context specific languages
      1. Domain specific languages
    2. System description languages
      1. Specification languages

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cover image ACM Other conferences

SPLC '14: Proceedings of the 18th International Software Product Line Conference - Volume 1

September 2014

377 pages

ISBN:9781450327404

DOI:10.1145/2648511

Editors:
Stefania Gnesi
ISTI-CNR, Italy
,
Patrick Heymans
University of Namur, Belgium
,
Julia Rubin
IBM Research, Israel
,
Krzysztof Czarnecki
University of Waterloo, Canada
,
Deepak Dhungana
Siemens AG, Austria
,
Alessandro Fantechi
University of Florence, Italy
,
General Chairs:
Alessandro Fantechi
University of Florence, Italy
,
Stefania Gnesi
ISTI-CNR, Italy

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 15 September 2014

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SPLC '14: 18th International Software Product Line Conference

September 15 - 19, 2014

Florence, Italy

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SPLC '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 97 submissions, 37%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 167 of 463 submissions, 36%

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Cited By

Chacón-Luna AGutiérrez AGalindo JBenavides D(2020)Empirical software product line engineeringInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2020.106389128:COnline publication date: 1-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2020.106389
Leserf Pde Saqui-Sannes PHugues J(2019)Trade-off analysis for SysML models using decision points and CSPsSoftware & Systems Modeling10.1007/s10270-019-00717-0Online publication date: 20-Jan-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-019-00717-0
Echeverría J(2017)Research on Augmenting the MDD Process with Variability ModelingACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/3011286.301130241:6(1-6)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3011286.3011302
Reinhartz-Berger IFigl KHaugen y(2017)Investigating styles in variability modelingInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2017.01.01287:C(81-102)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2017.01.012
Saeed MSaleh FAl-Insaif SEl-Attar M(2016)Empirical validating the cognitive effectiveness of a new feature diagrams visual syntaxInformation and Software Technology10.5555/2873826.287401071:C(1-26)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2873826.2874010
Echeverría JPérez FCetina CPastor Ó(2016)Comprehensibility of Variability in Model Fragments for Product ConfigurationAdvanced Information Systems Engineering10.1007/978-3-319-39696-5_29(476-490)Online publication date: 21-May-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39696-5_29
Urli SBergel ABlay-Fornarino MCollet PMosser S(2015)A visual support for decomposing complex feature models2015 IEEE 3rd Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT)10.1109/VISSOFT.2015.7332417(76-85)Online publication date: Sep-2015
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Li MBatmaz FGuan LGrigg AIngham MBull P(2015)Model-based systems engineering with requirements variability for embedded real-time systems2015 IEEE International Model-Driven Requirements Engineering Workshop (MoDRE)10.1109/MoDRE.2015.7343874(1-10)Online publication date: Aug-2015
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