)- Formal Specification of Software Product Lines: A Graph Transformation Based Approach

Abstract

A Software Product Line is a set of software products that share a number of core properties but also differ in others. Differences and commonalities between products are typically described in terms of features. A Feature Diagram is a hierarchically structured model that defines the features and their dependencies, while a Featured Transition System is used concisely to model behaviour of each product. In this context, formal modeling and verification are critical for managing the inherent complexity of systems with a high degree of variability. This work presents a formal specification of Software Product Line models based on rewriting logic. We propose an automatic framework for translating featured transition system and feature diagram into an equivalent Maude specification. It is based on meta-modelling and graph transformation. The power of this translation resides in the fact that the proposed formalization preserves source models semantics. An illustrative example is presented. The approach allows various verification and analysis activities. The obtained results are significant.