Identifying variability in object-oriented code using model-based code mining

First published in
Lecture notes in computer science  
Number in series
9953 LNCS
Start Page
547
End Page
562
Citation
Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Discussion, Dissemination, Applications. ISoLA 2016, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (9953): 547-562 (2016)
Contribution to Conference
7th International Symposium, ISoLA 2016  
Publisher DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-47169-3_43
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84993995738
Publisher
Springer
A large set of object-oriented programming (OOP) languages exists to realize software for different purposes. Companies often create variants of their existing software by copying and modifying them to changed requirements. While these so-called clone-and-own approaches allow to save money in short-term, they expose the company to severe risks regarding long-term evolution and product quality. The main reason is the high manual maintenance effort which is needed due to the unknown relations between variants. In this paper, we introduce a modelbased approach to identify variability information for OOP code, allowing companies to better understand and manage variability between their variants. This information allows to improve maintenance of the variants and to transition from single variant development to more elaborate reuse strategies such as software product lines. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach by means of a case study analyzing variants generated from an existing software product line and comparing our findings to the managed reuse strategy.
DDC Class
004: Informatik
More Funding Information
Partially supported by the DFG (German Research Foundation) under grant SCHA1635/2-2 and by the European Commission within the project HyVar (grant agreement H2020-644298).