A quality aggregation model for service-oriented software product lines based on variability and composition patterns

Abstract

Quality evaluation is a challenging task in monolithic software systems. It is even more complex when it comes to Service-Oriented Software Product Lines (SOSPL), as it needs to analyze the attributes of a family of SOA systems. In SOSPL, variability can be planned and managed at the architectural level to develop a software product with the same set of functionalities but different degrees of non-functional quality attribute satisfaction. Therefore, architectural quality evaluation becomes crucial due to the fact that it allows for the examination of whether or not the final product satisfies and guarantees all the ranges of quality requirements within the envisioned scope. This paper addresses the open research problem of aggregating QoS attribute ranges with respect to architectural variability. Previous solutions for quality aggregation do not consider architectural variability for composite services. Our approach introduces variability patterns that can possibly occur at the architectural level of an SOSPL. We propose an aggregation model for QoS computation which takes both variability and composition patterns into account. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.