MAVIS - MAnagement of Variability in Information Systems

当软件系统为不同的市场和应用环境定制时，它们的发展变得越来越复杂。这种产生的复杂性大部分源于未管理的系统功能和特性的可变性。未管理的可变性阻碍了可测试性和质量保证，并增加了出现缺陷的可能性。软件工程社区已经开发出有良好基础的实践来开发具有可变性的软件密集型系统。这种所谓的软件产品族（或软件产品线- SPL）是基于仔细区分核心功能和变体特性的架构模型和方法而发展和保证质量的。没有使用SPL实践进行设计的“遗留”系统必须作为实现SPL实践的先决条件进行重新设计。这包括(1)软件变化点的提取，(2)软件工件与核心组件和变体的关联，以及(3)遗留系统的重构以促进SPL实践。研究团体已经开发了支持将遗留软件迁移到spc的方法和工具。然而，这些结果的适用性通常仅限于特定类型的系统。很少有实证研究来评估“大规模”的SPL再造方法和工具的成熟度和准备情况，并且没有特别选择来证明给定方法的工业强度案例研究。该项目的目的是审查、选择和评估当前SPL再工程方法和工具的准备情况，这些方法和工具是由我们的合作伙伴OSCAR EMR开发的医疗领域的一个高度发展的软件系统。该项目的结果将为当前SPL再造方法的适用性、成熟度、可扩展性和局限性提供新的实证见解。它们将使OSCAR EMR和研究界受益，因为它们将为技术转让和改进现有方法和工具的后续合作研究提供经验基础。

The evolution of software systems becomes increasingly complex when they are customized for diversemarkets and application contexts. Much of this arising complexity stems from unmanaged variability of systemfunctionality and features. Unmanaged variability impedes testability and quality assurance and increases thelikelihood of defects. The software engineering community has developed well-founded practices to developsoftware-intensive systems with variability. Such so-called software product families (or software product lines- SPL) are evolved and quality assured based on architectural models and methods that carefully distinguishbetween core functionality and variant features."Legacy" systems that have not been engineered with SPL practices must be reengineered as a prerequisite toimplementing SPL practices. This involves the (1) extraction of the software's variation points, (2) theassociation of software artifacts to core components and variants, and (3) the refactoring of the legacy systemto facilitate SPL practices.The research community has developed methods and tools in support of migrating legacy software to SPLs.However, the applicability of these results is often limited to particular kinds of systems. Few empirical studiesexist to assess the maturity and readiness of SPL reengineering methods and tools "at scale" and withindustrial-strength case studies that were not specifically chosen to demonstrate a given method.The objective of this project is to review, select and assess the readiness of current SPL reengineeringmethods and tools in the context of a heavily evolved software system in the medical domain, developed by ourpartner OSCAR EMR. The results of this project will provide novel empirical insights on the applicability,maturity, scalability and limitations of current SPL reengineering methods. They will benefit OSCAR EMR aswell as the research community, as they will provide an empirical basis for technology transfer and follow-upcollaborative research on improving existing methods and tools.