EMPLOYMENT OF FUZZY LOGIC IN FEATURE DIAGRAMS TO MODEL VARIABILITY IN SOFTWARE FAMILIES

Abstract

The features of software family members may vary according to the needs of particular market segments or purposes. The assessment of what will be common and what will be variable feature may result from particular needs and market strategies. Further, there are diverse application profiles, each requiring specific sets of variant features. The same feature set may be prioritized in diverse ways by for specific applications. This paper proposes a system description based on a feature diagram tree, annotated with weighted variable features in the software family context. The principle of how some variant features may be described on the basis of fuzzy logic is introduced and discussed. The proposed description integrates the external cross-tree constraints, and the resulting homogeneity of the logic opens the opportunity to integrate additional tools into the scenario, e.g., generators, or support for constraint based reasoning. The use of the proposed approach is demonstrated by the example of a power plant description.