Variability representations in class models
Daniel Strüber, Anthony Anjorin, Thorsten Berger · 2020
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.