RESEARCH OUTPUTS / RÉSULTATS DE RECHERCHE
Author(s) - Auteur(s) :
Publication date - Date de publication :
Permanent link - Permalien :
Rights / License - Licence de droit d’auteur :
Bibliothèque Universitaire Moretus Plantin
Institutional Repository - Research Portal
Dépôt Institutionnel - Portail de la Recherche
researchportal.unamur.be
University of Namur
Workflow-driven Product Derivation (Invited Talk)
Hubaux, Arnaud; Abbasi, Ebrahim Khalil; Classen, Andreas; Heymans, Patrick
Published in:
First International Workshop on Product Line Requirements Engineering and Quality (PLREQ'10), June 30, 2010 , Essen, Germany
Publication date:
2010
Document Version
Early version, also known as pre-print
Link to publication
Citation for pulished version (HARVARD):
Hubaux, A, Abbasi, EK, Classen, A & Heymans, P 2010, Workflow-driven Product Derivation (Invited Talk). in K Schmid (ed.), First International Workshop on Product Line Requirements Engineering and Quality (PLREQ'10),
June 30, 2010 , Essen, Germany.
General rights
Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain
• You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Workflow-driven Product Derivation
Arnaud Hubaux, Ebrahim Abbasi, Andreas Classen, Patrick Heymans
PReCISE Research Centre, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Namur Namur, Belgium
{ahu, eab, acs, phe}@info.fundp.ac.be
Variability models, feature diagrams (FDs) ahead, are commonly used to document product line (PL) requirements. They are also often used during product derivation where they are fed to configuration tools which support semi-automated feature selec-tion. Configuration tools facilitate this task by automatically propagating the decisions made and by ensuring their overall consistency. However, most feature-based config-uration tools assume that there exists a single monolithic FD and do not account for configuration processes that are distributed among various stakeholders who have spe-cific concerns and who intervene at different moments. Our collaborations with industry have confirmed the need for techniques and tools that support such complex configura-tion processes.
In order to provide a modelling and reasoning framework for this process, we built upon our earlier work on formal semantics for FDs [1] and proposed feature con-figuration workflows(FCWs) [2], a formalism that combines the workflow language YAWL [3] with FDs.
An FCW, such as the one shown in Figure 1, is a workflow where tasks (such as Web Administrator or PloneMeeting Manager ) are associated with FDs. In our work, we used YAWL as workflow modelling language. The configuration process fol-lows the workflow. A FD is only configured when the task to which it is linked (through a start link) is executed. Generally, a task is assigned to a stakeholder, and the FD that is configured during the task captures her concerns and responsibilities. The second kind of node in a workflow is the condition (e.g. I , pm or ) which designates a point in time. Linking a FD to a condition (through a stop link) means that the FD has to be fully configured when the condition is reached. In the example, it means that once pm is reached, there cannot be any decision left open in the FD of the web administrator and PloneMeeting manager.
The workflow is not the only link between FDs. Constraints can also be added across FDs, such as the excludes link between features Standard workflow and Archived in Figure 1. Since the task and the stop of a FD are not necessarily directly linked to each other, the configuration decision can be postponed until the condition is reached. For instance, the stop of the Web Administrator , viz. pm , is placed only after PloneMeeting Manager . The decision of including or excluding the feature Standard workflow, for instance, does not have to be taken during task Web Administrator , be-cause the person executing PloneMeeting Manager is also able to make this decision, the feature Standard workflow being the same.
The original implementation strategies for FCWs we studied are available in [2]. These strategies have been later completed to address FCW normalisation and decision
PloneMeeting Manager task pm End User task PloneMeeting Manager Meeting Config
Workflows and security Meeting workflow Standard workflow Collège workflow Archive workflow X End User User interface Meeting display states
Archived Created Decided Closed Published Meeting Config <<excludes>> stop stop f g h and-decomposition f g h or-decomposition f g h x
xor-decomposition start condition stop condition
pm condition task
Web Administrator
Meeting Config
Workflows and security Meeting workflow
Standard workflow Collège workflow Archive workflow Zope 3 condition interface Zope 3 action interface X Web Administrator task stop <<equals>> <<equals>> <<equals>> f optional feature <<equals>> <<equals>>
Fig. 1. Example FCW taken from the PloneMeeting configuration menu.
postponement problems [4]. Yet, an efficient implementation of these solutions is still to be provided.
In order to automate FCW editing and configuration, we are developing a tool based on YAWL and SPLOT [5]. YAWL provides support for workflow editing, task man-agement and proposes a repertoire of advanced checks on workflows like soundness or weak soundness [6]. SPLOT provides support for FD configuration and constraint propagation [5]. Since YAWL and SPLOT are web-based applications, we are building a tool that relies on web-services to maintain the connection between the task manage-ment and FD configuration environmanage-ments, and to enforce FCW semantics.
The next step on the agenda is to implement algorithms that evaluate whether an FCW is in normal form [4] and whether deadlocks can occur. In addition, the merging of inconsistent configurations obtained in concurrent environments (e.g. distributed off-line configuration) will have to be dealt with.
Acknowledgements
This work is sponsored by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme of the Bel-gian State, BelBel-gian Science Policy, under the MoVES project and the FNRS.
References
1. Schobbens, P.Y., Heymans, P., Trigaux, J.C., Bontemps, Y.: Feature Diagrams: A Survey and A Formal Semantics. In: RE’06. (September 2006) 139–148
2. Hubaux, A., Classen, A., Heymans, P.: Formal modelling of feature configuration workflow. In: SPLC’09, San Francisco, CA, USA (2009)
3. van der Aalst, W., ter Hofstede, A.: Yawl: yet another workflow language. Information Sys-tems 30(4) (2005) 245–275
4. Classen, A., Hubaux, A., Heymans, P.: Analysis of feature configuration workflows (poster). In: Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Con-ference (RE’09), Atlanta, Georgia, USA (2009)
5. Mendonc¸a, M.: Splot. http://www.splot-research.org/ (May 2010)
6. van der Aalst, W.M.P., van Hee, K., ter Hofstede, A., Sidorova, N., Verbeek, H., Voorhoeve, M., Wynn, M.T.: Soundness of workflow nets:classification, decidability, and analysis. Tech-nical report, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (2008)
