RESDEC: Online Management Tool for Implementation Components Selection in Software Product Lines Using Recommender Systems

Abstract

Software product lines (SPL) management is one of the most im portant activities for the software engineer and it represents one of the key pieces of software product line engineering. When a software system grow fast, configuring a product becomes a costly and error-prone activity due to the amount of features available for configuration. This process becomes more complex when for each feature, there is more than one component that implements it. Currently the tools available for configuration management do not have automated mechanisms to facilitate the optimal components selection that meet the functions required by a given product. In this paper, we introduce a prototype component-based recommender system called RESDEC (REcommender System that suggest imple mentation Components from selecteD fEatures) designed to manage the best implementation components alternatives. Our tool is vali dated using WordPress-based websites where the implementation components are represented by plugins and the recommendations generated by RESDEC help interested parties in the search and efficient plugins selection to configure websites.