research-article

Extending the identification of object-oriented variability implementations using usage relationships

Authors:

Johann Mortara,

Xhevahire Tërnava,

Philippe Collet,

Anne-Marie Pinna-DeryAuthors Info & Claims

SPLC '21: Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume B

Pages 91 - 98

https://doi.org/10.1145/3461002.3473943

Published: 06 September 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Many variability-rich object-oriented systems rely on multiple traditional techniques (inheritance, patterns) to implement their variability in a single codebase. These variability implementation places are neither explicit nor documented, hampering their detection and variability comprehension. Based on the identification of symmetry property in seven implementation techniques, a first approach was proposed with symfinder to automatically identify and display the variability of a system in a graph-based visualization structured by inheritance. However, composition, or more generally the usage relationship, is extensively used to implement the variability in object-oriented systems, and without this information, comprehending the large amount of variability identified by symfinder is not trivial. In this paper, we present symfinder-2, an extension of the former approach that incorporates the usage relationships to better identify potential variability implementations. We provide two ways to mark classes as entry points, user-defined and automatic, so that the visualization is filtered and enables users to have a better focus when they identify variability. We also report on the evaluation of this extension to ten open-source Java-based systems.

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Cited By

Collet PMortara JBrault YDery-Pinna A(2024)The VariCity Ecosystem: City Visualization of Object-Oriented Variability in Java and TypeScriptScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2024.103210(103210)Online publication date: Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2024.103210
Mortara JCollet PPinna-Dery AFelfernig AFuentes L(2022)IDE-assisted visualization of indebted OO variability implementationsProceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume B10.1145/3503229.3547066(74-77)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3503229.3547066
Mortara JCollet PDery-Pinna A(2021)Visualization of Object-Oriented Variability Implementations as Cities2021 Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT)10.1109/VISSOFT52517.2021.00017(76-87)Online publication date: Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/VISSOFT52517.2021.00017

Index Terms

Extending the identification of object-oriented variability implementations using usage relationships
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development techniques
      1. Reusability
        Software product lines
    2. Software post-development issues
      1. Software reverse engineering
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Software system structures
      1. Software architectures
        Object oriented architectures

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Abstract
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cover image ACM Conferences

SPLC '21: Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume B

September 2021

148 pages

ISBN:9781450384704

DOI:10.1145/3461002

General Chairs:
Mohammad Reza Mousavi
King's College London, UK
,
Pierre-Yves Schobbens
University of Namur, Belgium

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

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Published: 06 September 2021

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SPLC '21: 25th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference

September 6 - 11, 2021

Leicester, United Kindom

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Cited By

Collet PMortara JBrault YDery-Pinna A(2024)The VariCity Ecosystem: City Visualization of Object-Oriented Variability in Java and TypeScriptScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2024.103210(103210)Online publication date: Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2024.103210
Mortara JCollet PPinna-Dery AFelfernig AFuentes L(2022)IDE-assisted visualization of indebted OO variability implementationsProceedings of the 26th ACM International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume B10.1145/3503229.3547066(74-77)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3503229.3547066
Mortara JCollet PDery-Pinna A(2021)Visualization of Object-Oriented Variability Implementations as Cities2021 Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT)10.1109/VISSOFT52517.2021.00017(76-87)Online publication date: Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/VISSOFT52517.2021.00017

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