A popularização dos dispositivos móveis em todas as camadas sociais tem motivado o desenvolvimento de aplicações educacionais móveis, denominadas aplicações de m-learning. Neste cenário, as aplicações existentes, mesmo possuindo diversos benefícios e facilidades no que diz respeito ao ensino e aprendizagem, apresentam problemas e desafios relacionados, sobretudo no que se refere ao desenvolvimento, reuso e padronização arquitetural. Por outro lado, na vertente do reúso de software, percebe-se uma crescente adoção do conceito de Linha de Produtos de Software (LPS). Esse paradigma possibilita às organizações explorar as similaridades e variabilidades de seus produtos, aumentando a reutilização de artefatos e, como consequência, diminuindo custos e tempo de desenvolvimento. Neste trabalho é apresentada uma LPS voltada ao domínio das aplicações de m-learning, denominada M-SPLearning. A proposição da M-SPLearning envolveu desde o estudo inicial para a obtenção de uma análise de domínio efetiva, até a implementação dos componentes previamente analisados. A LPS concebida teve seus respectivos produtos avaliados experimentalmente no cenário industrial, fornecendo evidências de que sua utilização pode acelerar o time-to-market de produtos de m-learning, com um número reduzido de defeitos. / The popularity of mobile devices in all social classes has motivated the development of mobile educational applications, called m-learning applications. The existing applications, even having many benefits and facilities in relation to teaching and learning, also have problems and challenges, especially regarding the development, reuse and architectural standardization. Particularly, there is an increasing adoption of the concept of Software Product Line (SPL) in researches related to reuse. This paradigm enables organizations to explore the similarities and variabilities of their products, increasing the reuse of artifacts and, consequently, reducing costs and development time. This work presents an SPL focused on the domain of m-learning applications, named M-SPLearning. The development of M-SPLearning has comprised since the initial study for an effective domain analysis until the implementation of the components previously analyzed. Such SPL had its products experimentally evaluated in the industrial scenario, providing evidences that its use can accelerate the time-to-market of m-learning applications, with a reduced number of faults.

Toute institution concernée par le développement de logiciels, qu’il s’agisse d’un éditeur ou d’un organisme de services, doit faire face au challenge de compétitivité : “ faire de l’économie, un «objet de première classe» en génie logiciel ”. Cet impératif de penser l’économie du logiciel, s’est traduit par l’objectif d’obtenir une meilleure maîtrise sur la productivité du développeur. La Réutilisation Logicielle (Software Reuse) est un moyen privilégié d’augmenter cette productivité, en particulier quand elle est systématisée. Deux types d’activités doivent être considérés pour améliorer la réutilisation logicielle, le développement pour la réutilisation (development for reuse) et le développement par la réutilisation (development by reuse). Plusieurs solutions ont été proposées pour contribuer au développement pour la réutilisation. L’approche lignes de produits se distingue par sa contribution au développement par la réutilisation, à travers l’assistance et l’automatisation de la sélection, la configuration, et la dérivation de nouveaux produits. Néanmoins, malgré que cette approche a positionné la réutilisation comme activité centrale dans son processus de développement, celle-ci reste difficile à réaliser dans beaucoup de situations. Par exemple, en raison de l’absence de spécification ou gestion de la variabilité qui peut se manifester dans chacun des artefacts de toutes les étapes du cycle de développement. Dans ce cadre, la problématique générale de cette thèse CIFRE consiste en l’industrialisation d’une usine logicielle par la systématisation de la réutilisation dans chacune de ses étapes et la maximisation de l’automatisation des transitions entre étapes. Afin de mieux supporter l’agilité des environnements métier, notre premier objectif est la spécification de la variabilité au sein des modèles de processus métier, de sorte que les modèles conçus soient directement utilisables dans les usines logicielles. Notre second objectif consiste à introduire la spécification de la variabilité lors de l'ingénierie des exigences permettant ainsi de systématiser leur réutilisation, et l’établissement des liens de traçabilité avec les modèles de processus métier variables précédents. Ainsi, un modèle d’architecture logicielle (orientée services) peut être généré au sein de l'usine logicielle, comme implémentation des processus métier modélisés précédemment et dans le respect des exigences spécifiées. / Any organization involved in software engineering has to deal with reduction of production time and cost, in order to face the competitiveness challenge. This imperative of thinking the software economy resulted in the goal of getting better control on developer productivity. Software Reuse is a preferred way to increase the productivity, particularly when it is systematized. Two types of activities should be considered to improve software reuse, development for reuse and development by reuse. Several solutions have been proposed to contribute and improve development for reuse. For its part, product line approach is distinguished by its contribution to development by reuse through support and automation of selection, configuration, and derivation of new products. However, although this approach has positioned reuse as a core activity in its engineering process, it remains difficult to realize it in many situations. For example, due to lack of specification or management of variability which may occur in each artifacts from all steps of the engineering process. In this context, the general issue of this thesis consists in industrialization of software product line, by the contribution to systematization of reuse in each steps and automation of transitions between those steps. To better support the business agility, our first goal is the specification of variability within business process models, in order to make them directly usable into software factory. Our second goal is to introduce variability specification into requirements engineering, enabling systematic reuse of requirements models and establishing traceability links with previous models of variable business processes. Thus, an architecture model (service oriented) can be generated in software factory, as implementation of modeled business processes with compliance to specified requirements.

Software product line engineering is a common method for designing complex software systems. Feature modeling is the most common approach to specify product lines. A feature model is a feature diagram (a special tree of features) plus some crosscutting constraints. Feature modeling languages are grouped into basic and cardinality-based models. The common understanding of the semantics of feature models is a Boolean semantics. We discuss a major deficiency of this semantics and fix it by applying, in turn, modal logic, the theory of multisets, and formal language theory. In order to adequately represent the semantics of basic models, we propose a Kripke semantics and show that basic feature modeling needs a modal rather than Boolean logic. We propose two multiset based theories for cardinality-based feature diagrams, called flat and hierarchical semantics. We show that the hierarchical semantics of a given cardinality-based diagram captures all information in the diagram. We also charac- terize sets of multisets, which can provide a hierarchical semantics of some diagrams. We provide three different reduction processes going from a cardinality-based diagram to an appropriate regular expression. As for crosscutting constraints, we propose a formal language interpretation of them. We also characterize some existing analysis operations over feature models in terms of operations on the corresponding languages and discuss the relevant decidability problems. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Linhas de Produtos de Software (LPS) abstraem a semelhança entre produtos e envolvem o conceito de reúso de software para desenvolver software em larga escala com mais rapidez e qualidade. O reúso dos artefatos em uma LPS é planejado e executado desde sua concepção, sendo assim possível armazenar esses artefatos em um repositório (núcleo de ativos reusáveis) para utilização posterior. Porém, ao se construir um repositório para uma certa LPS, este atende apenas às especificações desta arquitetura e não promove o reúso desses ativos em outras LPS, causando uma certa perda no potencial de reusabilidade dos ativos produzidos e armazenados. Além disso, a definição e os dados da execução do processo de desenvolvimento dessas LPS também não são armazenados prevendo o reúso, o que gera retrabalho para definir e instanciar um processo de software sempre que uma nova LPS é criada. Neste contexto, este trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar uma abordagem baseada em um conjunto de serviços para promover o amplo reúso de ativos produzidos e de elementos de processo utilizados, além de facilitar a criação e o desenvolvimento de linha de produtos de software, permitindo o gerenciamento do núcleo de ativos reusáveis. Por possuir uma interface baseada em serviços, esta abordagem poderá ser incorporada também a outros ambientes. Para validar a abordagem, verificar vantagens e sugerir melhorias, foi conduzida uma prova de conceito com sua aplicação. Os resultados dessa prova comprovaram a viabilidade da abordagem em cumprir os objetivos propostos. / Software Product Lines (SPL) extract the similarity among products and use the software reuse concept to produce large-scale software with increased quality and reduction in the development time. Reuse in SPL is planned and executed since the beginning for each artifact resulting from the development process, and then these artifacts are stored in a repository (reusable core assets) for later use. However, when a repository is built for a specific SPL, it supports only the specifications for that architecture and do not promote the reuse of these assets among distinct SPL, which inhibits their reuse potential. In addition, the definition and execution data of the development process applied are not stored properly for reuse, which causes a re-work to define and instantiate a software process when creating a new SPL. In this context, this work aims at present a service-based approach to promote the wide reuse of the produced assets and process elements, also to facilitate the creation and the management of SPL and to allow the management of the reusable core assets. Once this approach has a service-based interface, it can be embedded into other environments. In order to validate this approach, point out advantages and suggest improvements, a concept proof was performed applying it. The results of this proof ensured the approach viability to fulfill the proposed goals.

Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) has been proven to reduce development and maintenance costs, improving the time-to-market, and increasing the quality of product variants developed from a product family via systematic reuse of its core assets. SPLE has been successfully used in the development of safety-critical systems, especially in automotive and aerospace domains. Safety-critical systems have to be developed according to safety standards, which demands safety analysis, Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), and assurance cases safety engineering artefacts. However, performing safety analysis, FTA, and assurance case construction activities from scratch and manually for each product variant is time-consuming and error-prone, whereas variability in safety engineering artefacts can be automatically managed with the support of variant management techniques. As safety is context-dependent, context and design variation directly impact in the safety properties changing hazards, their causes, the risks posed by these hazards to system safety, risk mitigation measures, and FTA results. Therefore, managing variability in safety artefacts from different levels of abstraction increases the complexity of the variability model, even with the support of variant management techniques. To achieve an effective balance between benefits and complexity in adopting an SPLE approach for safety-critical systems it is necessary to distinguish between reusable safety artefacts, whose variability should be managed, and those that should be generated from the reused safety artefacts. On the other hand, both industry and safety standards have recognized the use of model-based techniques to support safety analysis and assurance cases. Compositional safety analysis, design optimization, and model-based assurance cases are examples of techniques that have been used to support the generation of safety artefacts required to achieve safety certification. This thesis aims to propose a model-based approach that integrates model-based development, compositional safety analysis, and variant management techniques to support the systematic reuse and generation of safety artefacts in safety-critical software product line engineering. The approach contributes to reduce the effort and costs of performing safety analysis and assessment for a particular product variant, since such analysis is performed from the reused safety artefacts. Thus, variant-specific fault trees, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), and assurance case artefacts required to achieve safety certification can be automatically generated with the support the model-based safety analysis and assurance case construction techniques. / Engenharia de Linha de Produtos de Software (ELPS) contribui para a redução dos custos de desenvolvimento e de manutenção, a melhoria do time-to-market, e o aumento da qualidade de produtos desenvolvidos a partir de uma família de produtos por meio do reuso sistemático dos ativos principais da linha de produtos. A ELPS vem sendo utilizada com sucesso no desenvolvimento de sistemas embarcados críticos, especificamente nos domínios de sistemas automotivos e aeroespaciais. Sistemas embarcados críticos devem ser desenvolvidos de acordo com os requisitos definidos em padrões de segurança, que demandam a produção de artefatos de análise de segurança, árvores de falhas e casos de segurança. Entretanto, a realização de atividades de análise de segurança, análise de árvores de falhas e construção de casos de segurança de forma manual para cada produto de uma linha de produtos é uma tarefa demorada e propensa a erros. O gerenciamento de variabilidade em artefatos de análise de segurança pode ser automatizado com o apoio de técnicas de gerenciamento de variabilidades. Em virtude de safety ser uma propriedade dependente de contexto, a variabilidade no projeto e contexto inerente uma linha de produtos software impacta na definição de propriedades de segurança do sistema, modificando as ameaças à segurança do sistema, suas causas e riscos, medidas de mitigação aplicáveis, e resultados de análise de árvore de falhas. Dessa forma, gerenciar variabilidades em artefatos relacionados à safety em diferentes níveis de abstração aumenta a complexidade do modelo de variabilidade mesmo com o apoio de técnicas de gerenciamento de variabilidades. Para alcançar o equilíbrio eficaz entre os benefícios e a complexidade da adoção de uma abordagem de ELPS para o desenvolvimento de sistemas embarcados críticos é necessário fazer a distinção entre artefatos de safety reusáveis, em que a variabilidade deve ser gerenciada, e artefatos de safety que devem ser gerados a partir de artefatos reusáveis. Por outro lado, tanto a indústria quanto os padrões de segurança têm reconhecido o uso de técnicas dirigidas a modelos para apoiar a análise segurança e a construção de casos de segurança. Técnicas de análise de segurança composicional e otimização de projeto, e de construção de casos de segurança dirigido a modelos vêm sendo utilizadas para apoiar a geração de artefatos de safety requeridos para certificação. O objetivo desta tese é a proposta de uma abordagem dirigida a modelos que integra técnicas de desenvolvimento dirigido a modelos, análise de segurança composicional e otimização de projeto, e construção de casos de segurança dirigido a modelos para apoiar o reuso sistemático e a geração de artefatos de safety em engenharia de linhas de produtos de sistemas embarcados críticos. A abordagem proposta reduz o esforço e os custos de análise e avaliação de segurança para produtos de uma linha de produtos, uma vez que tal análise é realizada a partir de artefatos de safety reusados. Assim, artefatos como análises de árvores de falhas e de modos de falha e efeitos, e casos de segurança requeridos para certificação podem ser gerados automaticamente com o apoio de técnicas dirigidas a modelos.

A importância das disciplinas de programação nas grades curriculares de cursos de computação, tanto no contexto nacional como internacional e as limitações e problemas apresentados em tais disciplinas, tem levado a um esforço significativo em pesquisas na área da Informática na Educação para propor soluções de software no domínio de ensino e aprendizagem de programação, com destaque para a adoção de soluções para a modalidade de aprendizagem eletrônica (e-learning). No entanto, é possível notar limitações nas pesquisas já conduzidas, principalmente em relação à quantidade ainda reduzida de estudos que adotam a aprendizagem móvel (m-learning) como modalidade para ensinar a programar. Observa-se, ainda, a incipiência de pesquisas que adotam metodologias provenientes da Engenharia de Software baseada em Reúso para apoiar o processo de criação de produtos de software educacionais. A adoção de tais metodologias pode permitir uma variação maior de produtos educacionais, permitindo o desenvolvimento de modo a atender um maior número de professores, instituições e domínios. Neste contexto, esta pesquisa de doutorado tem como objetivo propor e desenvolver uma infraestrutura para o desenvolvimento de aplicações educacionais móveis para o ensino de fundamentos de programação a serem utilizadas em nível superior. Para isso, diferentes soluções já existentes foram avaliadas permitindo a criação de um catálogo de requisitos educacionais móveis que serviu de artefato para o estabelecimento de uma arquitetura de linha de produtos de software (LPS) e de uma ferramenta de apoio, intitulada TANGRAM (an infrasTructure to support the development of mobile leArning applicatioNs for the teachinG and leaRning of progrAMming fundamentals), que permite a criação facilitada dos produtos dessa linha. Adicionalmente, um conjunto inicial de funcionalidades para a plataforma móvel foi desenvolvido. Para verificar a viabilidade do uso de tal infraestrutura, diversas avaliações foram conduzidas nas diferentes etapas de concepção da mesma. Ao final, foram observadas evidências preliminares de que a LPS e a ferramenta TANGRAM possibilitam a criação de aplicações educacionais móveis para serem utilizadas na mitigação de problemas no ensino e aprendizagem de fundamentos programação. Além de contribuições complementares referentes ao catálogo de requisitos para aplicações educacionais móveis, as escolhas metodológicas e tecnológicas na concepção do projeto arquitetural, e um conjunto de gestos de interação para telas sensíveis ao toque a integrar as aplicações educacionais, que possibilitam a condução de trabalhos futuros na exploração dos mesmos no que se refere à mitigação de problemas no ensino e aprendizagem de fundamentos programação. / The importance of programming disciplines in computer curricula courses worldwide has increasing the efforts of researches in informatics in education area to propose software for the mitigation of problems in programming domain, highlighting the adoption of electronic learning solutions (e-learning). Meanwhile, it is possible to identify limitations in researches that adopting other learning modalities, as mobile learning modality (m-learning) for teaching of programming. Furthermore, it is also noticed a lack of adoption of reused-based software engineering methodologies, for supporting the process of development of educational software for programming domain, in special, software product lines (SPL).The adoption of such methodologies may allow a higher variation of educational products and a higher support for a greater number of professors and institutions. In this perspective, this doctoral research aimed at the establishment of an infrastructure to support the development of m-learning applications for the teaching of programming fundamentals in undergraduates courses. For that, several software solutions in programming domain were analysed allowing the creation of a m-learning requirement catalog. Such catalog was used as the main artifact for the establishment of an SPL and a support tool entitled TANGRAM (an infrasTructure to support the development of mobile leArning applicatioNs for the teachinG and leaRning of progrAMming fundamentals). The tool was proposed to facilitate the creation of applications considering the SPLs artifacts and their management. Additionally, an initial set of features for the mobile learning applications were developed, e.g., a catalog of gestures. To investigate the viability in the use of such infrastructure, several evaluations were conducted in each phase of conception of the SPL. At the end, preliminar positive evidence indicates that both LPS and TANGRAM tool may allow the develpment of m-learning applications for the mitigation of problems in the teaching and learning of programming fundamentals. Besides, contributions related with the m-learning requirement catalog, the methods and technologies selected for the conduction of the architectural project, and a set of gesture for touchscreen interfaces were also identified, resulting in an infrastructure which may be better investigate and adopted to improve the processes of teaching and learning in the programming fundamentals domain.

<p>software product line is a set of software-intensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specificneeds of a particular market segment or mission. The main attractive part of SPL is developing a set of common assets which includes requirements, design, test plans, test cases, reusable software components and other artifacts. Tools for the development of softwareproduct line are very few in number. The purpose of these tools is to support the creation, maintenance and using different versions ofproduct line artifacts. This requires a development environment that supports the management of assets and product development,processes and sharing of assets among different products.</p><p>The objective of this master thesis is to investigate the available tools which support Software Product Line process and itsdevelopment phases. The work is carried out in two steps, in the first step available Software Product Line tools are explored and a list of tools is prepared, managed and a brief introduction of each tool is presented. The tools are classified into different categoriesaccording to their usage, relation between the tools is established for better organization and understanding. In the second step, two tools Pure::variant and MetaEdit+ are selected and the quality factors such as Usability, Performance, Reliability, MemoryConsumption and Capacity are evaluated.</p>

A software product line is a set of software-intensive systems that share a common, managed set of features satisfying the specificneeds of a particular market segment or mission. The main attractive part of SPL is developing a set of common assets which includes requirements, design, test plans, test cases, reusable software components and other artifacts. Tools for the development of softwareproduct line are very few in number. The purpose of these tools is to support the creation, maintenance and using different versions ofproduct line artifacts. This requires a development environment that supports the management of assets and product development,processes and sharing of assets among different products. The objective of this master thesis is to investigate the available tools which support Software Product Line process and itsdevelopment phases. The work is carried out in two steps, in the first step available Software Product Line tools are explored and a list of tools is prepared, managed and a brief introduction of each tool is presented. The tools are classified into different categoriesaccording to their usage, relation between the tools is established for better organization and understanding. In the second step, two tools Pure::variant and MetaEdit+ are selected and the quality factors such as Usability, Performance, Reliability, MemoryConsumption and Capacity are evaluated.

This study proposes an industrialization model, Software Factory Automation, for establishing software product lines. Major contributions of this thesis are the conceptualization of Domain Specific Kits (DSKs) and a domain design model for software product lines based on DSKs. The concept of DSK has been inspired by the way other industries have been successfully realizing factory automation for decades. DSKs, as fundamental building blocks, have been deeply elaborated with their characteristic properties and with several examples. The constructed domain design model has two major activities: first, building the product line reference architecture using DSK abstraction / and second, constructing reusable asset model again based on DSK concept. Both activities depend on outputs of feature-oriented analysis of product line domain. The outcome of these coupled modeling activities is the reference architecture and asset model of the product line. The approach has been validated by constructing software product lines for two product families. The reusability of DSKs and software assets has also been discussed with examples. Finally, the constructed model has been evaluated in terms of quality improvements, and it has been compared with other software product line engineering approaches.

Some mechanisms to enable an effective transition from domain models to web service descriptions are developed. The introduced domain modeling support provides verification and correction on the customization part. An automated mapping mechanism from the domain model to web service ontologies is also developed. The proposed approach is based on Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA), Semantic Web technologies and ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (ebBP). Major contributions of this work are the conceptualizations of a feature model for web services and a novel approach for knowledge-based elicitation of domain-specific outcomes in order to allow designing and deploying services better aligned with dynamically changing business goals, stakeholders&#039 / concerns and end-users&#039 / viewpoints. The main idea behind enabling a knowledge-based approach is to pursue automation and intelligence on reflecting business requirements into service descriptions via model transformations and automated reasoning. The proposed reference variability model encloses the domain-specific knowledge and is formalized by using Web Ontology Language (OWL). Adding formal semantics to feature models allows us to perform automated analysis over them such as the verification of model customizations through exploiting rule-based automated reasoners. This research was motivated due to the needs for achieving productivity gains, maintainability and better alignment of business requirements with technical capabilities in engineering service-oriented applications and systems.