Feature model debugging based on description logic reasoning

Software product line engineering refers to the concept of sharing commonalities and variabilities of a set of software products in a target domain of interest. Feature models are one of the prominent representation formalisms for software product lines. Given the fact that feature models cover all possible applications and products of a target domain, it is possible that the artifacts are not necessarily and always consistent. Therefore, identifying and resolving inconsistencies in feature models is a significant task; especially, due to the fact that a large number of possible products and complex interactions between the software product line features need to be checked. To address these challenges, in this paper, we propose a framework with an automated tool to find and fix the inconsistencies of feature models based on Description Logic (DL) reasoning. The basic idea of our approach is to first transform and represent a feature model using Description Logics. The second step is to identify the possible inconsistencies of the feature model using DL reasoning and then recommend appropriate solutions to a domain analyst for resolving existing inconsistencies.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye