Variability Modeling for Questionnaire-based System Configuration

Abstract. Variability management, be it at the level of models or at the level of code, is a recurrent issue in systems engineering. It arises for ex-ample 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 presents a formal foundation for representing sys-tem variability for the purpose of generating questionnaires that guide users during system configuration. The generated questionnaires are in-teractive, in the sense that questions are only posed if and when they can be answered, and the space of allowed answers to a question is de-termined by previous answers. The approach has been implemented and tested against a reference model from the logistics domain. Key words: variability modeling, system configuration, questionnaire, software product family, reference mode