Automating Mappings between Use Case Diagrams and Feature Models for Software Product Lines

Features have been widely used by the product line community to model variability. They represent the common and variable characteristics of the members of a product line. They are very well suited for the configuration of product line members. Outside the product line community, use cases are also widely used to model the functionality of systems at a similar level of abstraction but from a user perspective. Significant work has been done by several authors regarding the possible relationship between these two perspectives of a system. Nonetheless, this has been done in an informal way. In this paper we explore the relationships between these two perspectives and describe a possible approach to automate the transformation from UML use case to feature models.