A LITERATURE REVIEW ON FEATURE DIAGRAM PRODUCT COUNTING AND ITS USAGE IN SOFTWARE PRODUCT LINE ECONOMIC MODELS

In software product line engineering, feature diagrams are a popular means to represent the similarities and differences within a family of related systems. In addition, feature diagrams implicitly model valuable information that can be used in economic models to estimate the cost savings of a product line. In particular, this paper reviews existing proposals on computing the total number of products modeled with a feature diagram and, given a feature, the number of products that implement it. This paper also reviews the economic information that can be estimated when such numbers are known. Thus, this paper contributes by bringing together previously-disparate streams of work: the automated analysis of feature diagrams and economic models for product lines.