Supporting Online Updates of Software Product Lines: A Controlled Experiment

The evolution of Software Product Lines (SPL) is challenging because stakeholders have to deal with both regular evolution and the co-existence of different products. Our focus of product evolution is on the tasks integrators have to perform to update deployed SPL products with minimal interruption of services. In case of Egemin, our industrial partner, the updates of SPL products is further hampered as a consequence of outdated and imprecise architectural knowledge of deployed products. To facilitate the updates of products, we have developed the architecture-centric approach which comprises two complementary parts: an update viewpoint and a supporting tool. In this paper we present an evaluation of the architecture-centric approach. The approach is compared with the Egemin's current update approach in a controlled experiment. In the experiment 17 professionals were asked to perform 68 updates of logistic systems. The results obtained from the experiment show that the architecture-centric approach significantly improves the correctness of updates and reduces the interruption of services during updates of Egemin's SPL products.