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Questionnaire-based variability modeling for system configuration

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Abstract

Variability management is a recurrent issue in systems engineering. It arises for example in enterprise systems, where modules are configured and composed to meet the requirements of individual customers based on modifications to a reference model. It also manifests itself in the context of software product families, where variants of a system are built from a common code base. This paper proposes an approach to capture system variability based on questionnaire models that include order dependencies and domain constraints. The paper presents analysis techniques to detect circular dependencies and contradictory constraints in questionnaire models, as well as techniques to incrementally prevent invalid configurations by restricting the space of allowed answers to a question based on previous answers. The approach has been implemented as a toolset and has been used in practice to capture configurable process models for film post-production.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BPM Group, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

    Marcello La Rosa, Wil M. P. van der Aalst, Marlon Dumas & Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede

  2. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Wil M. P. van der Aalst

  3. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Marlon Dumas

Authors
  1. Marcello La Rosa
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  2. Wil M. P. van der Aalst
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  3. Marlon Dumas
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  4. Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marcello La Rosa.

Additional information

Communicated by Prof. Ketil Stolen.

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La Rosa, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P., Dumas, M. et al. Questionnaire-based variability modeling for system configuration. Softw Syst Model 8, 251–274 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-008-0090-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-008-0090-3

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