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MODELS 2020
Fri 16 - Fri 23 October 2020
Fri 23 Oct 2020 15:00 - 15:20 at Room B - B8-Variability and Evaluation Chair(s): Mahdi Manesh

Owing to the ever-growing need for customization, software systems often exist in many different variants. To avoid the need to maintain many different copies of the same model, developers of modeling languages and tools have recently started to provide representations for such variant-rich systems, notably variability mechanisms that support the implementation of differences between model variants. Available mechanisms either follow the annotative or the compositional paradigm, each of them having unique benefits and drawbacks. Language and tool designers select the used variability mechanism often solely based on intuition. A better empirical understanding of the comprehension of variability mechanisms would help them in improving support for effective modeling. In this paper, we present an empirical assessment of annotative and compositional variability mechanisms for class models. We report and discuss findings from an experiment with 73 participants, in which we studied the impact of the chosen variability mechanisms during model comprehension tasks. We find that, compared to the baseline of listing all model variants separately, the annotative technique did not affect developer performance. Use of the compositional mechanism correlated with impaired performance. For a subset of our tasks the annotative mechanism is preferred to the compositional one and the baseline. We present actionable recommendations concerning support of flexible, tasks-specific solutions, and the transfer of best established best practices from the code domain to models.

Fri 23 Oct

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15:00 - 16:15
B8-Variability and EvaluationTechnical Track at Room B
Chair(s): Mahdi Manesh Porsche Digital GmbH
15:00
20m
Full-paper
Variability Representations in Class Models: An Empirical AssessmentFT
Technical Track
Daniel Strüber Radboud University Nijmegen, Anthony Anjorin , Thorsten Berger Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden / University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Pre-print
15:20
20m
Full-paper
Co-evolution of Simulink Models in a Model-Based Product LineP&I
Technical Track
Robbert Jongeling Malardalen University, Antonio Cicchetti Mälardalen University, Federico Ciccozzi Malardalen University, Jan Carlson Malardalen University
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
15:40
15m
Talk
Claimed Advantages and Disadvantages of (dedicated) Model Transformation languages: A Systematic Literature ReviewJ1st
Technical Track
Stefan Götz , Matthias Tichy Ulm University, Germany, Raffaela Groner
15:55
15m
Demonstration
Using Benji to Systematically Evaluate Model Comparison AlgorithmsDemo
Technical Track
Lorenzo Addazi Mälardalen University, Antonio Cicchetti Mälardalen University