A systematic review of evaluation of variability management approaches in software product lines
A systematic review of evaluation of variability management approaches in software product lines
复制标题
软件产品线可变性管理方法评估的系统回顾
DOI：
10.1016/j.infsof.2010.12.006
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发表时间：
2011
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
M. Babar
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Lianping Chen;M. Babar
可变性管理（VM）是软件产品线工程（SPLE）最重要的活动之一，它旨在利用平台和大规模定制开发软件密集型系统。VM包含的活动引起和表示软件工件的可变性，建立和管理不同的可变性之间的依赖关系，并支持开发的可变性，建立和发展的软件系统的家庭。在过去的二十年里，软件产品线（SPL）社区已经投入了大量的精力来开发各种方法来处理与可变性相关的挑战。已经报道了几十种VM方法。然而，在这方面，方法对20世纪90年代至2007年12月期间在SPLE中报道的VM方法进行了系统的文献回顾，共收集了97篇关于SPLE中VM方法的文献根据我们的纳入和排除标准。所选论文发表在56个出版场所。我们发现，只有一小部分被审查的方法使用严格的科学方法进行了评估。采用实证研究方法的审查研究的详细调查发现，在各个方面的质量评估标准的显着的质量缺陷。现有证据的合成表明，所有的研究，除了一个，只报告积极的effects. CONCLUSION从这个系统的审查结果表明，绝大多数的报告VM的方法没有得到充分的评价，使用科学严谨的方法。现有的证据很少，提出的证据质量很低。调查结果突出了需要改进的领域，即，严格评估VM方法。然而，报告的证据在不同的研究中非常一致。这意味着所提出的方法如果在适当的情况下得到适当的应用，可能是非常有益的。因此，可以得出结论，进一步的调查需要更多地关注不同方法可能更有益的背景。
CONTEXTVariability management (VM) is one of the most important activities of software product-line engineering (SPLE), which intends to develop software-intensive systems using platforms and mass customization. VM encompasses the activities of eliciting and representing variability in software artefacts, establishing and managing dependencies among different variabilities, and supporting the exploitation of the variabilities for building and evolving a family of software systems. Software product line (SPL) community has allocated huge amount of effort to develop various approaches to dealing with variability related challenges during the last two decade. Several dozens of VM approaches have been reported. However, there has been no systematic effort to study how the reported VM approaches have been evaluated.OBJECTIVEThe objectives of this research are to review the status of evaluation of reported VM approaches and to synthesize the available evidence about the effects of the reported approaches.METHODWe carried out a systematic literature review of the VM approaches in SPLE reported from 1990s until December 2007.RESULTSWe selected 97 papers according to our inclusion and exclusion criteria. The selected papers appeared in 56 publication venues. We found that only a small number of the reviewed approaches had been evaluated using rigorous scientific methods. A detailed investigation of the reviewed studies employing empirical research methods revealed significant quality deficiencies in various aspects of the used quality assessment criteria. The synthesis of the available evidence showed that all studies, except one, reported only positive effects.CONCLUSIONThe findings from this systematic review show that a large majority of the reported VM approaches have not been sufficiently evaluated using scientifically rigorous methods. The available evidence is sparse and the quality of the presented evidence is quite low. The findings highlight the areas in need of improvement, i.e., rigorous evaluation of VM approaches. However, the reported evidence is quite consistent across different studies. That means the proposed approaches may be very beneficial when they are applied properly in appropriate situations. Hence, it can be concluded that further investigations need to pay more attention to the contexts under which different approaches can be more beneficial.