Variability Identification and Representation in Software Product Line UML Sequence Diagrams: Proposal and Empirical Study

Variability management is an essential activity to ensure which products can be instantiated from the core assets of Software Product lines (SPLs). Stereotype-based Management of Variability (SMarty) is one of the several approaches to manage variabilities specified in UML diagrams. SMarty, in its fourth version, supports variability management specification in use case, class, activity and components diagrams. However, it lacked the representation of dynamic aspects of a SPL. The inclusion of UML interaction diagrams in the core assets allows the representation of an important abstraction level. Therefore, this paper presents a proposal for extending SMarty to manage variabilities in UML sequence diagrams. In addition, it presents an experimental validation that provides evidences of the effectiveness of this extension which supports its use both in academic and industrial environment.