Heterogeneous modeling and testing of software product lines

Abstract

Software product line (SPL) engineering is a widely accepted approach to systematically realizing software reuse in an industrial environment. Feature models, a centerpiece of most SPL engineering techniques, are appropriate to model the variability and the structure of SPLs, but not their behavior. This paper uses the idea to link feature modeling to model-based behavior modeling and to determine the test direction (top-down or bottom-up) based on the variability binding. This heterogeneous modeling enables a holistic system testing for validating both desirable (positive) and undesirable (negative) properties of the SPL and variants. The proposed approach is validated by a non-trivial example and evaluated by comparison.