SOFTWARE PRODUCT LINE ANALYSIS OF ENTERPRISE

INFORMATION SYSTEM

Faheem Ahmed, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Deaprtment of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N5A5B9

ywords: Enterprise Information System, Software Product Line, Software Product Line Analysis, Reusability,

Component, Requirement Analysis, Use Case Analysis.

Abstract: Now a day geographical and physical constraint that allowed only for fixed and static placements of

resources has vanished completely within an enterprise utilizing the concept of information technology to

integrate their business needs. The object oriented programming approach has paved a way to reusability

of components thus reducing cost and development efforts up to certain extend. Software product line has

further strengthened the concept of reusability, and component-based architecture. In this paper we have

analysed the concept of Software Product Line Analysis for an Enterprise Information System which will

help to construct a Software Product Line within the organization to produce high quality software product

in order to full fill the information technology requirements of the organization.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Enterprise Information System

Enterprise Information System (EIS) can be defined

as an application, or group of applications integrated

together to provide information infrastructure for an

enterprise. Every enterprise has certain business

processes and underlying data in order to efficiently

run its business. The Enterprise Information System

implements these business processes over the core

umbrella of underlying data to fulfill the information

technology requirements of the enterprise.

1.2 Software Product Line

A software product line is a set of software-intensive

systems sharing a common, managed set of features

that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market

segment or mission and that are developed from a

common set of core assets in a prescribed way

(Software Product Lines, 2003).

1.3 Software Product Line Analysis

Software Product Line Analysis (Chastek et al.,

2000) is requirements engineering for a product line,

it is the link between the recognition of a business

opportunity and the design of product line

architecture. Product line analysis is part of Core

Asset Development. The essential activities

performed during the course of software product line

analysis can be described as following,

Scope of Software Product Line Analysis.

Organizational Structure Analysis.

Stakeholder Identification & Impact.

Business Process Identification & Description.

Requirement Analysis.

Requirement Modelling.

Technological Analysis.

Constraints Analysis.

Figure 1.1 illustrates the relationship of those

activities among each other. Client application uses

services, business objects and functions to process

data for information retrieval.

526

Ahmed F. and Fernando Capretz L. (2004).

SOFTWARE PRODUCT LINE ANALYSIS OF ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEM.

In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 526-529

DOI: 10.5220/0002604705260529

 SciTePress

Figure 1.1: Software Product Line Analysis Activities. Figure 1.2: Stakeholders View about the Software Product

Line.

2 SOFTWARE PRODUCT LINE

ANALYSIS FOR EIS

2.1 Scope of Software Product Line

Analysis

The product line scope is a description of the

products that will constitute the product line or what

the product line is capable of including (A

Framework for Software Product Line Practice,

2003). The scope defines the overall goal to be

achieved by incorporating and development of

software product line within an enterprise. The

scope elaborates objectives, context, boundaries and

utilization of software product line. An enterprise

always looks software product line as an integral

tool to help in achieving the information technology

requirements of the organization in a better cost

effective and efficient manner

2.2 Organizational Structure Analysis

The organizational structure enables us to determine

the nature and functional hierarchy of the

organization, which helps in making a decision

topology tree. Typical structure within an enterprise

includes various departments like, Information

Technology, Procurement, Payroll, Marketing,

Inventory, Management, Human Resource, Business

Development and Training. Organizational structure

definition and elaboration during the product line

analysis yields us sources for requirement gathering

and analysis, it givers us a view of the business

process and their description within the enterprise.

2.3 Stakeholder Identification &

Impact

A stakeholder in an organization is (by definition)

any group or individual who can affect or is affected

by the achievement of the organization’s objectives

(Freeman, 1984). It can be customer, project

manager, executive, engineer, personnel, technician,

and database administrator. During the software

product line analysis we determine the potential

stakeholders, which are affected by the development

of the software product line. Enterprise information

system may have stakeholders like, business

executives, business analysts, technical personnel,

product line analysts, designers, implementers,

product analysts, end users, internal and external

systems, government departments etc. Figure 1.2

shows the stakeholders view about the software

product line.

2.4 Business Process Identification &

Description

The business processes describe the functional

capability and structure of the enterprise. The goal of

the business process is offer the products and the

services which customers will need, with the most

appropriate speed, quality and cost (Kobayashi,

1997). The business view itself describes and

SOFTWARE PRODUCT LINE ANALYSIS OF ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEM

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interrelate various operational activities require to be

performed to meet the enterprise objectives within

business domains. The integral components used to

identify and describe a business process within an

enterprise are people who performed the activities,

strategy used to define the directions of the action,

functions illustrates the process and task that an

enterprise must perform, infrastructure gives us the

resources like equipments, machinery the enterprise

hold to perform activities, information is the

knowledge and data enterprise already have to be

followed, organizational structure describe

responsibilities with respect to business process.

2.5 Requirement Analysis

The requirement analysis is the process of gathering,

refining and interpretation of the requirements for

the system under consideration of construction.

Requirement analysis for the software product line

to be developed for an enterprise information system

yields the following major facts,

Identify the basic needs of software product line

for enterprise.

Identify the utilization of software product line

for the future software products.

Identify the structure of the software product line

for enterprise.

Identify the integration of components with in an

enterprise information system.

Elaborates the information technology

infrastructure of the enterprise.

Describe the information technology needs of the

potential users of the enterprise.

Evaluate the cost and schedule effectiveness of

the software product line.

Identify the business process to be implemented.

2.6 Requirement Modelling

Requirement modelling provides us facility to model

the requirement graphically so that requirements

must become more elaborative and can be easily

understand by various stakeholders. The product line

requirements model is a set of four interrelated work

products (Product Line Analysis, 2003), which are

Use Case Model, Feature Model, Object Model and

Dictionary. Figure 1.3 illustrates the top-level model

of the enterprise information system, how it is

decomposed in to various sub systems and how the

enterprise information system serves as a bridge

between various sub applications. Figure 1.4

illustrates the functional behaviour of the software

product line with respect to various stakeholders. It

shows that stakeholders are generally divided into

two categories. The one category of stakeholders

are those that take part directly or indirectly in the

development of software product line and other

group take advantage of products developed.

2.7 Technological Analysis

Enterprise information systems are built on the basis

of various technologies and processing topologies. It

can be from client server to multi-tier distributed

processing system using J2EE, Enterprise Java

Beans, and CORBA. The technological layer in the

enterprise information system always serve as the

physical platform on which the entire system is

working, therefore it is necessary to perform

analysis with respect to choice of technology,

compatibility among different technologies, existing

configuration, proposed and future technology

resources and processing requirements.

2.8 Constraints Analysis

Constraints are those predefined conditions under

which system has to develop and will operate.

Constraint analysis therefore provides a formal basis

for insuring the views and operations on views are

correctly specified (Urban, 1989). Constraints

analysis will help to find out external and internal

predefined conditions and requirements to be

fulfilled by the enterprise information system for

smooth functioning, they can be operating system,

hardware constraints, network constraints, inter

process communication, scalability, integration of

components, business rule and security.

3 FINAL REMARKS

Software Product Line has emerged as integral and

vital concept for the reusability of existing resources

in the process of software development. Enterprises

can incorporate this concept to reduce the cost,

resources and schedule in order to meet the

information technology requirements. This can put

him ahead of their competitors and will enable them

to provide better and new services to its end user.

Software product line analysis is an essential activity

while developing software product line for an

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organization, it helps out to find out requirements,

present resources, business process and

implementation constraints, implication and

advantages of implementation.

Figure 1.3: Top Level Use Case Model of Enterprise

Information System and Subsystems.

Figure 1.4: Feature Model of Software Product Line for

Enterprise Information System

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Product Line Analysis: A Practical Introduction Software

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A Framework for Software Product Line Practice,

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http://www.sei.cmu.edu/plp/frame_report/coreADA.ht

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Freeman, R.E, Strategic Management: A stakeholder

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http://www.sei.cmu.edu/plp/pl_analysis.html

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