A reusable set of real-world product line case studies for comparing variability models in research and practice

Abstract

Real-world cases describing (product) variability in production systems are rare and often not accessible. Thus, researchers often use toy examples or develop fictitious case studies. These are designed to demonstrate their approach but rarely to compare multiple approaches. In this paper, we aim at making variability modeling evaluations comparable. We present and provide a reusable set of four real-world case studies that are easy to access, with artifacts represented in a universal, variability-model-agnostic way, the industrial Product-Process-Resource Domain-Specific Language (PPR DSL). We report how researchers can use the case studies, automatically transforming the Domain-Specific Language (DSL) artifacts to well-known variability models, e.g., product feature models, using the Variability Evolution Roundtrip Transformation (VERT) process. We compare the expressiveness and complexity of the transformed feature models. We argue that the case studies with the DSL and the flexible transformation capabilities build a valuable contribution to making future research results more comparable and facilitating evaluations with real-world product lines.