@inproceedings {CzarneckiGruenbacherRabiser+12,
editor={Krzysztof Czarnecki and Paul Grünbacher and Rick Rabiser and Klaus Schmid and Andrzej Wasowski},
title={Cool Features and Tough Decisions: A Comparison of Variability Modeling Approaches},
publisher={ - ACM},
editor={Ulrich W. Eisenecker and Sven Apel and Stefania Gnesi},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems (VaMoS '12)},
year={2012},
pages={173-182},
isbn={978-1-4503-1058-1},
doi={10.1145/2110147.2110167},
abstract={Variability modeling is essential for defining and managing the commonalities and variabilities in software product lines. Numerous variability modeling approaches exist today to support domain and application engineering activities. Most are based on feature modeling (FM) or decision modeling (DM) but so far no systematic comparison exists between these two major classes of approaches. Over the last two decades many new features have been added to both FM and DM and it is a tough decision which approach to use for what purpose. This paper clarifies the relation between FM and DM. We aim to systematize the research field of variability modeling and to explore potential synergies. We compare multiple aspects of FM and DM ranging from historical origins and rationale, through syntactic and semantic richness, to tool support, identifying commonalities and differences. We hope that this effort will improve the understanding of the range of approaches to variability modeling by discussing the possible variations. This will provide insights to users considering adopting variability modeling in practice and to designers of new languages, such as the new OMG Common Variability Language.}
}