Manifoldness of Variability Modeling — Considering the Potential for Further Integration
- Variability management has become an important concern in software and systems engineering. Especially in industrial settings a rigid management of variability has been identified as an important prerequisite for further optimization of the development process, e.g. for reuse of software sub-systems across vehicle models such as the Mercedes Benz A-Class and C-Class. In response to this growing practical interest, the scientific community has come up with numerous concepts and techniques for modeling variability. However, despite initial attempts to integrate or unify some of these manifold approaches, a clear understanding of how they precisely relate to each other is still not yet achieved.
In the paper, various techniques for variability modeling are elaborated and a basic classification scheme is proposed. From this we derive their common capabilities, which arguably embody the essence of variability modeling in general. On this basis, a discussion is presented that concerns the potential and feasibility of integrating all theseVariability management has become an important concern in software and systems engineering. Especially in industrial settings a rigid management of variability has been identified as an important prerequisite for further optimization of the development process, e.g. for reuse of software sub-systems across vehicle models such as the Mercedes Benz A-Class and C-Class. In response to this growing practical interest, the scientific community has come up with numerous concepts and techniques for modeling variability. However, despite initial attempts to integrate or unify some of these manifold approaches, a clear understanding of how they precisely relate to each other is still not yet achieved.
In the paper, various techniques for variability modeling are elaborated and a basic classification scheme is proposed. From this we derive their common capabilities, which arguably embody the essence of variability modeling in general. On this basis, a discussion is presented that concerns the potential and feasibility of integrating all these diverse techniques into a single, common technique for variability modeling.…

