A Comprehensive Feature-Oriented Traceability Model for Software Product Line Development

Feature-oriented traceability is essential for efficient Software Product Line (SPL) development, including product derivation and SPL evolution. Widely-used feature based method has been proved to be effective in domain analysis and modeling. However, it cannot support the traceability naturally due to the big gap between the problem space and the solution space. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive feature-oriented traceability model for SPL development, which provides mechanisms for various features and implementation types throughout the four levels of goal model, feature model, feature implementation model and program implementations. In it, the feature implementation model is introduced as the intermediate level between features and implementation artefacts. The feature interactions are captured in the finer role level, and they help to clarify the complex mapping between features and program implementations. The traceability meta-model for SPL development is introduced and an example on the library management domain is demonstrated.