Semantic Enrichment and Verification of Feature Models in DSPL

Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPLs) support the development of context-aware systems, which use context information to perform adapted services aiming to satisfy user’s needs. Feature models (FM) represent system similarities and variability in DSPL. However, some FM representations are limited in expressiveness. For example, relevant domain aspects (e.g., context-aware feature that implements a particular use case) are not described in FM. This research proposes an approach based on an OWL-DL ontology to add semantics to FM. It also provides automatic verification of the correctness and consistency of these models. We implemented this approach in a feature model design tool called FixOnto. Our first evaluation results showed that the use of ontologies brings benefits such as improvements on SPL information retrieval, and inference and traceability of the features, use contexts, and SPL artifacts.