Domain Service Acquisition and Domain Modeling Based on Feature Model

Domain engineering is the core technology of systematic software reuse and the precedent period of software requirements engineering. FODA method and other FODA-based methods of domain analysis have made great progress. In these methods, feature model and feature-oriented modeling methodology are widely accepted. However, they have three limitations: 1) Feature model cannot be applied separately, it must work together with other models, such as entity-relationship model and function model to present the whole domain. 2) Feature model is a conceptual tree model, which needs standardized description mechanism to support better conversion to domain design, domain implementation and application engineering. 3) With the service-oriented method permeating into current software development process, traditional domain model encounters challenges in providing more effective reuse to service-oriented software requirements activities. To solve these problems, we proposed to combine service-oriented method and domain engineering together, introduced a new concept of Domain Service, and gave its acquisition process and OWL-S based ontology definition. Domain Service is acquired from the classic feature model and could encapsulate features and their relations to model domain commonalities and differences. OWL-S based specification of Domain Service enhances the application of domain model. After Domain Service acquisition and specification, we can get a domain model composed of a set of Domain Services with different granularity. The model has two layers: Domain Service Layer and Ontology Layer, which can be mapped to the domain model produced from the FODA method. Finally, we applied our method in the domain of Public Travel Information Systems.