Keynotes and Lectures
Modularity in the Context of Product Line Variabilityby Kyo Chul Kang
Abstract
Product line software engineering (PLSE) has been recognized as a key software development paradigm for meeting diverse needs of the global market efficiently and effectively giving competitive advantages to IT industries and embedded systems developers. The PLSE paradigm has been changing the way software developers think about software development: from the single application view to the application family, i.e., product line, view.
Several software engineering concepts and techniques have been developed to support the product line engineering, including commonality and variability analysis, product line architecture, variation points and variants, and variability management. However, modularity of software in the context of product line engineering has become even more important than it was in the context of single application development as we need to manage variability and also promote reuse across a family of related applications. We must take the variability into consideration when we design for modularity, bringing another dimension of complexity into software engineering.
In my talk, I will give an overview of the evolution of reuse concepts, introduce product line engineering, and then discuss various approaches to modularity in the context of product line variability. Pending research issues will also be discussed.
Bio
Dr. KyoChul Kang received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1982. Since then he has worked as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and as a member of technical staff at Bell Communications Research and AT&T Bell Laboratories before joining the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University as a senior member in 1987. He is currently a professor at the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in Korea. He served as General Chair for the 8th International Conference on Software Reuse (ICSR) held in Madrid, Spain in 2004, General Chair for the 11th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC2007) held in Kyoto, Japan in September 2007, and also for the 14th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC2010) held in Jeju, Korea in September 2010.
While at the University of Michigan, he was involved in the development of PSL/PSA, a requirements engineering tool system, and a Meta modeling technique. Since then his research has focused on software reuse and software product line engineering. His current research areas include software reuse and product line engineering, requirements engineering, and computer-aided software engineering.