A Use Case Based Approach to Feature Models´ Construction

In the research of software reuse, feature models have been widely adopted to organize the requirements of a set of applications in a software domain. However, there still lacks an effective approach to minimizing analysts´ participation in feature models´ construction. In this paper, we propose a use case based semi-automatic approach to the construction of feature models. The basic idea of this approach is to first construct a set of feature models for individual applications(called application feature models, AFMs) in a software domain, then adjust, and merge the set of AFMs to form a feature model for this domain (called a domain feature model, DFM). The main characteristic of this approach is that it provides a set of rules and algorithms to make the construction of AFMs (from use cases) and the construction of DFMs (by merging a set of AFMs) be carried out automatically. A running example is used to illustrate the main characteristic and the feasibility of this approach.