A Case Study Comparison of Variability Representation Mechanisms with the HeRA Product Line

Abstract

Software product line engineering (SPLE) is a software development approach that attempts to maximize reusability. In the domain engineering phase, managing variability poses a great challenge to developers because traditional techniques of software engineering are not applicable in handling variability. In this paper, we apply the Product Family Modeling Language (PFML) approach and the Orthogonal Variability Model (OVM) approaches to the requirements and architecture descriptions of the HeRA product line to represent variability. With this application, we derive five important perspectives in terms of the practical usage of each approach and compare both approaches according to these perspectives. As a result, the comparison shows the important considerations of variability representation approaches for being used in real industry.