Change impact analysis in product-line architectures

Change impact analysis is fundamental in software evolution, since it allows one to determine potential effects upon a system resulting from changing requirements. While prior work has generically considered change impact analysis at architectural level, there is a distinct lack of support for the kinds of architectures used to realize software product lines, so-called product-line architectures (PLAs). In particular, prior approaches do not account for variability, a specific characteristic of software product lines. This paper presents a new technique for change impact analysis that targets product-line architectures. We propose to join a traceability-based algorithm and a rule-based inference engine to effectively traverse modeling artifacts that account for variability. In contrast to prior approaches, our technique supports the mechanisms for (i) specifying variability in PLAs, (ii) documenting PLA knowledge, and (iii) tracing variability between requirements and PLAs. We demonstrate our technique by applying it to the analysis of requirements changes in the product-line architecture of a banking system.