Supporting Software Variability by Reusing Generic Incomplete Models at the Requirements Specification Stage

Selecting components that satisfy a given set of requirements is a key problem in software reuse, especially in reusing between different domains of functionality. This concern has been treated in the ARIFS methodology, which provides an environment to reuse partial and formal requirements specifications, managing the variability implicit in their incompleteness. In this paper, we define generic incomplete specifications, to introduce an explicit source of variability that allows reusing models across different domains, accommodating them to operate in multiple contexts. An extended formal basis is defined to deal with these tasks, that entails improvements in the reuse environment.