Extracting and Modeling Product Line Functional Requirements

TLDR

The authors propose an extractive method for constructing product line requirements assets. They define functional requirements profiles from domain action‑oriented language, extract and validate them using verb‑direct object lexical affinities, analyze variation structures via semantic case analysis, merge FRPs to reveal interdependencies, model external variability with orthogonal variability modeling, and apply the approach to an auto‑marker product line. The approach complements domain analysis by rapidly revealing system functionalities and product line variabilities.

Abstract

We introduce an extractive approach to building a product line's requirements assets. We define the functional requirements profiles (FRPs) according to the linguistic characterization of a domain's action-oriented concerns, and show that FRPs can be extracted from a document based on domain-aware lexical affinities that bear a 'verb - direct object' relation. The validated FRPs are then amenable to semantic case analysis so as to uncover the variation structures. Finally, merging FRPs helps discover the requirements interdependencies. We use orthogonal variability modeling to represent the product line's external variability and constraints. We apply our approach to an auto-marker product line. The study shows our approach complements domain analysis by quickly offering insights into system functionalities and product line variabilities.