Research On Feature Combination Failure In Software Product Line

Feature-based approach has been used extensively in software product line. Meanwhile, it is worthy of lucubrating how to deal with features affect application implementation. On the one hand, there exist dependencies between software product line features, thus the feature modules in features are closely related in the same way. On the other hand, banding decision of variable features in applications has great impact on the module composition mapped by feature dependencies, even cause errors. For examples, during feature selection, if a variable feature is not bound, and the feature is dependent on mandatory features and bounded features, thus the final application will omit part of codes during feature composition, and will cause type errors in compile-time. This kind of problems is called Feature Composition Failures.Software component technique and Feature-oriented Programming (FOP) are used to become two kinds of development process of software product line. Aim at feature composition failures, combing three kinds of dependencies including Usage dependency, Modification dependency and Activation dependency and three kinds of variability types including optional, alternative and or, this paper analyzed this problem systematically and comprehensively, and described the problem scenario in development process of FOP-based software product line in detail.Based on detailed analysis to feature composition failures, this paper proposed a vertical decomposition method for feature modules to solve the problem. Its key mechanism is to introduce variability into the inner part of feature modules. Based on this method, this paper proposed a banding variability based feature module composition process. Combing these two methods, this paper proposed an effective solution for the problem in development process of FOP-based software product line, besides, this paper provides some guidance to solve the problem in development process of Component-based software product line. With the solution proposed in this paper, software product line organization can improve adaptability, scalability and configurability of core assets.