Reverse Engineering in Software Product Line - A Systematic Literature Review

Reverse engineering is the information extraction process on system by identifying and analyzing the components that are part of that system. We analyze existing research that related with reverse engineering process on software product line. There are two product line processes according to Software product line engineering framework they are domain engineering process and application engineering process. We investigate reverse engineering in domain engineering process (domain requirements, domain design, and domain realization, domain quality assurance). We performed a systematic literature review. A manual search resulting 71 papers considered for analysis. Results: The majority of reverse engineering studied in three domain activity in domain engineering process. That is requirement engineering, domain design and domain realization. There are inconsistent correlations between features in the reverse engineering process. These approaches extract features without constraints between its features. Conclusions: Reverse engineering methods are needed that are able to identify and maintain a consistent correlation between features in application engineering and domain engineering in the reverse engineering process. Finally, we provide gaps from existing research and show opportunities for future research.