Modeling Variant User Interfaces for Web-Based Software Product Lines

Author(s):  
Suet Chun Lee

Software product line (SPL) is a software engineering paradigm for software development. A software product within a product line often has specific functionalities that are not common to all other products within the product line. Those specific functionalities are termed “variant features” in a product line. SPL paradigm involves the modeling of variant features. However, little work in SPL investigates and addresses the modeling of variant features specific to user interface (UI). Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the de facto modeling language for object-oriented software systems. It is known that UML needs better support in modeling UIs. Thus, much research developed UML extensions to improve UML support in modeling UIs. Yet little of this work is related to developing such extensions for modeling UIs for SPLs in which variant features specific to UI modeling must be addressed. This research develops a UML extension -Web User Interface Modeling Language (WUIML) to address these problems. WUIML defines elements for modeling variant features specific to user interfaces for Web-based SPLs. The model elements in WUIML extend from the metaclass and BasicActivity of the UML2.0 metamodel. WUIML integrates the modeling of variant features specific to user interfaces to UML. For example, in a Web-based patient registration software product line, member products targeting British users may use British date format in the user interface, while member products targeting United States users may use United States date format in the user interface. Thus, this is a variant feature for this product line. WUIML defines a model element, XOR, to represent such exclusive or conditions in a product line user interface model. WUIML would reduce SPL engineers’ efforts needed in UI development. To validate the WUIML research outcome, a case study was conducted. The results of this empirical study indicate that modeling UIs for Web-based SPLs using WUIML is more effective and efficient than using standard UML.

2009 ◽  
pp. 760-790
Author(s):  
Suet Chun Lee

Software product line (SPL) is a software engineering paradigm for software development. SPL is important in promoting software reuse, leading to higher productivity and quality. A software product within a product line often has specific functionalities that are not common to all other products within the product line. Those specific functionalities are termed “variant features” in a product line. SPL paradigm involves the modeling of variant features. However, little work in SPL investigates and addresses the modeling of variant features specific to UI. UML is the de facto modeling language for object-oriented software systems. It is known that UML needs better support in modeling UIs. Thus, much research developed UML extensions to improve UML support in modeling UIs. Yet little of this work is related to developing such extensions for modeling UIs for SPLs in which variant features specific to user interfaces (UI) modeling must be addressed. This research develops a UML extension, WUIML, to address these problems. WUIML defines elements for modeling variant features specific to UIs for Web-based SPLs. The model elements in WUIML extend from the metaclass and of the UML2.0 metamodel. WUIML integrates the modeling of variant features specific to UIs to UML. For example, in a Web-based patient registration SPL, member products targeting British users may use British date format in the user interface, while member products targeting United States users may use United States date format in the user interface. Thus, this is a variant feature for this product line. WUIML defines a model element, XOR, to represent such exclusive or conditions in a product line user interface model. WUIML would reduce SPL engineers’ efforts needed in UI development. To validate the WUIML research outcome, a case study was conducted. The results of this empirical study indicate that modeling UIs for Web-based SPLs using WUIML is more effective and efficient than using standard UML.


Author(s):  
Guodong Shao ◽  
Y. Tina Lee

This paper proposes an effective, reusable solution for modeling and simulation. The approach is to develop a Software Product Line (SPL) architecture that explicitly captures the commonality and variability in a family of similar simulation systems. First responders and incident management personnel need better training resources to prepare for possible catastrophic events, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Live exercises are often very expensive to organize and conduct. With modeling and simulation technology, simulation-based exercise and training models could be developed. The SPL technology enables the simulation system to easily adapt to multiple contexts and allows the simulation system to reconfigure quickly. SPL models can be developed at different levels of scope and depth to suit the emergency responder's needs. By reusing the system requirement analysis, software architectures, and design, the development time is shorter, the development cost is lower, and the quality is easily maintained. This paper focuses on the application of SPL technology to simulation systems of emergency facilities, such as hospital emergency rooms, on-site emergency triage stations, decontamination stations, first-aid stations, and ambulances. The paper also introduces a prototype simulation of the SPL member system – a hospital emergency room simulation system that has been developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The detailed modeling of a family of emergency response facility simulation systems is performed based on the Product Line Unified Modeling Language (UML)-based Software engineering (PLUS) method.


2009 ◽  
pp. 1280-1312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gan Deng ◽  
Jeff Gray ◽  
Douglas C. Schmidt ◽  
Yuehua Lin ◽  
Aniruddha Gokhale ◽  
...  

This chapter describes our approach to modeldriven engineering (MDE)-based product line architectures (PLAs) and presents a solution to address the domain evolution problem. We use a case study of a representative software-intensive system from the distributed real-time embedded (DRE) systems domain to describe key challenges when facing domain evolution and how we can evolve PLAs systematically and minimize human intervention. The approach uses a mature metamodeling tool to define a modeling language in the representative DRE domain, and applies a model transformation tool to specify model-tomodel transformation rules that precisely define metamodel and domain model changes. Our approach automates many tedious, time consuming, and error-prone tasks of model-to-model transformation, thus significantly reducing the complexity of PLA evolution.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 2049-2056
Author(s):  
Rim Bouhaouel ◽  
Naoufel Kraïem ◽  
Zuhoor Al-Khanjari

The software community intends to make use of a standard approach for the software development to not build software product from scratch. This approach ensures a high quality of software with a controllable cost. It affects the whole process of the software  development, especially in the  early phases e.g. analysis and design. One of the most widespread language to modulate and document those two stages is UML (Unified Modeling Language), but the reuse of the UML model is used in ad-hoc method so why do not build a systematic method for reusing some fragments of UML? To realize it, we need to adopt a reuse approach, so we choose the software product line (SPL), based in collecting variability of the domain (in our case is UML). In fact, UML and SPL have a common issue is the model driven engineering, since both of them based on the modeling approach. This paper overviews the different areas of UML and explains the process of software Product line with its born issues to wit: MDE (Model Driven Engineering) and MDA (Model Driven Architect).


Author(s):  
Erick Sharlls Ramos de Pontes ◽  
Uirá Kulesza ◽  
Carlos Eduardo da Silva ◽  
Eiji Adachi ◽  
Elder Cirilo

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Vázquez-Ingelmo ◽  
Francisco J. García-Peñalvo ◽  
Roberto Therón

University employment and, specifically, employability has gained relevance since research in these fields can lead to improvement in the quality of life of individual citizens. However, empirical research is still insufficient to make significant decisions, and relying on powerful tools to explore data and reach insights on these fields is paramount. Information dashboards play a key role in analyzing and visually exploring data about a specific topic or domain, but end users can present several necessities that differ from each other, regarding the displayed information itself, design features and even functionalities. By applying a domain engineering approach (within the software product line paradigm), it is possible to produce customized dashboards to fit into particular requirements, by the identification of commonalities and singularities of every product that could be part of the product line. Software product lines increase productivity, maintainability and traceability regarding the evolution of the requirements, among other benefits. To validate this approach, a case study of its application in the context of the Spanish Observatory for University Employability and Employment system has been developed, where users (Spanish universities and administrators) can control their own dashboards to reach insights about the employability of their graduates. These dashboards have been automatically generated through a domain specific language, which provides the syntax to specify the requirements of each user. The domain language fuels a template-based code generator, allowing the generation of the dashboards’ source code. Applying domain engineering to the dashboards’ domain improves the development and maintainability of these complex software products given the variety of requirements that users might have regarding their graphical interfaces.


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