Aspect-Connectors to Support the Evolution o:Component-Based Product Line Architectures:A Comparative Study

摘要

Software Product Line architects are concerned not only with traditional software architecture issues, but also with variation mechanisms that support diversity of products. A variation point may be scattered over various implementation elements (i.e. components and connectors) undermining product line architecture evolution. Aspect-connectors support the modularization of variation points by integrating aspects and components concepts. This work quantitatively evaluates to what extent aspect-connectors supports evolution of component-based product line architectures by means of a comparative study against a pure object-oriented component model. This study considered five evolution measures: scattering of variation points, scattering of features, tangling of features, change impact on components, and efferent coupling between components. The results have shown evidences that aspect-connectors can provide effective support for product line architecture evolution.