Towards a component-based system model to improve the quality of highly configurable systems

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RT @DrLoveleenGaur: A great article I helped peer review published today in @PeerJCompSci https://t.co/eLYYaQUujM #ArtificialIntelligence #…
A great article I helped peer review published today in @PeerJCompSci https://t.co/eLYYaQUujM #ArtificialIntelligence #DataMiningandMachineLearning #SoftwareEngineering
PeerJ Computer Science

Main article text

 

Introduction

Research contributions

  • A significant review of literature has been carried out to understand the existing studies about agile SPLE and HCS. The review described that there is a need for a component-based system model consisting of SPL-based features and developed under agile methodology to improve the quality of HCS during verification identification, version control, and management for reuse of components during development.

  • To improve quality and productivity of HCS for SPL based component-based system a QeAPLE Model is proposed for APLE for HCS based SPL to manage variabilities and relevant selection of components depending on user feedback and reusability for identification, managing, and selection of variation and their relevant components for reuse and version control.

  • To automate the QeAPLE model developed a prototype based on the designed algorithm for the correct and relevant selection of components for reuse to manage variability during the development of SPL-based HCS products. The implemented in a real-world environment to evaluate the performance of prototype and practice theory into practice.

  • To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model, an empirical study is performed by the practitioners with the help of the prototype in the real scenario for a practical implication of the QeAPLE model.

  • After that performed a comparative analysis in an empirical study to evaluate the effectiveness of the QeAPLE model in terms of commonalities and variabilities management in HCS with the existing method. We also evaluated the performance of participants using the QeAPLE model as compared to existing methods. The existing model which we used for comparative analysis selected from literature i.e., Arkendi model (Mollahoseini Ardakani, Hashemi & Razzazi, 2018).

  • The QeAPLE model provide guidelines and directions for researchers and industrialists during dynamic variability management and selection of components for reuse and restructuring in APLE during HCS development.

Quality Ensured Agile Product Line Engineering Process Model

Main entities of proposed process model

Application requirements

Common reference architecture

Variation and commonalities identification

Component selection

Dependency evaluation

Component testing

Test suit cases repository

Documentation

Flow of the proposed process model

Experimental Evaluation

Experiment design

  • RQ1: Does the ease of adaption and understandability is improved?

  • RQ2: Does reducing the effort required to execute different phases is reduced?

  • RQ3: Does the development of desired quality product variant is achieved?

  • RQ4: Does the maintenance cost and effort of the developed product are minimized?

  • RQ5: Does the variation management of the product is increased?

Independent and dependent variables

Experiment case

  • Ease of adaptability and understanding

  • Required effort

  • Ability to achieve desired quality product variant

  • Maintenance complexity

  • Version management of the product variants

Experimental process

Participants

Algorithm

Analysis of experimental data

RQ1: easy to adapt and understand

RQ2: expected effort

RQ3: Better quality achievement

RQ4: Maintenance complexity

Threats to validity

Construct validity

Internal validity

External validity

Conclusion validity

Conclusion and Future Work

  • The presentation of innovatory knowledge about the agile, SPL, and their integration for the development of systems especially for HCS systems.

  • The proposition of the new hybrid process model allows the incorporation of SPL and agile processes together with the development support for HCS using the least dependent component selection.

  • The evaluation of the proposed approach using the use case study and practitioner close-ended interviews along with the empirical evaluation executed using students as subjects.

  • The main future direction could be the shortness of the time taken for the selection of the components.

  • Could be the introduction of AI technology result in better selection of component that is least dependent and highly effective for the required requirements of a variant.

Supplemental Information

Appendix A - Questionnaires.

DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.912/supp-2

Appendix AE Product Line Engineering Process Report.

DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.912/supp-3

Responses Data - Form Responses.

DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.912/supp-4

Additional Information and Declarations

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author Contributions

Tehseen Abbasi conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, performed the computation work, prepared figures and/or tables, and approved the final draft.

Yaser Hafeez conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, performed the computation work, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, and approved the final draft.

Sohail Asghar conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, and approved the final draft.

Shariq Hussain analyzed the data, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, and approved the final draft.

Shunkun Yang performed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, and approved the final draft.

Sadia Ali performed the experiments, prepared figures and/or tables, and approved the final draft.

Data Availability

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

The code, developed in Mango schema (as component library) and library in Node.js, used for this study, is available in the Supplemental File.

Funding

The work reported in this manuscript was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61672080. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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