Date: Monday, December 9, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Location: DC 1302
Joanne
Atlee
University
of
Waterloo
Cheriton
School
of
Computer
Science
Lecture
title:
"Feature
Interactions:
the
Good,
the
Bad,
and
the
Ugly"
Lecture
abstract:
Feature
orientation
is
an
increasingly
popular
method
for
decomposing
a
software-development
task
into
subproblems
—
in
this
case,
features
—
that
can
be
tackled
individually
and
incrementally.
Feature
orientation
is
particularly
relevant
in
software
product
lines,
where
a
family
of
similar
products
(e.g.,
smart
phones,
automotive
software)
is
understood,
constructed,
managed,
and
evolved
in
terms
of
its
common
and
optional
features.
One
challenge
to
feature
orientation
is
that
product
developers
need
to
consider
how
combinations
of
feature
interact
with
each
other.
The
Feature
Interaction
Problem
is
that
the
number
of
interactions
to
consider
is
exponential
in
the
number
of
features.
As
a
result,
developers
find
that
their
work
in
adding
a
new
feature
is
dominated
by
the
tasks
to
detect,
analyze,
and
verify
interactions
with
existing
features.
This
presentation
will
give
an
overview
of
research
on
feature
modularity
and
interactions,
including
(1)
a
language
for
modelling
features
as
separate
feature
modules,
whose
composition
is
a
model
of
a
product
line,
(2)
a
tool
for
analyzing
a
model
of
a
product
line
(rather
than
analyzing
each
of
the
separate
products),
and
(3)
a
strategy
for
coordinating
features
to
avoid
certain
classes
of
interactions.