When to Sample from Feature Diagrams?

Nikolai Käfer; Sven Apel; Christel Baier; Clemens Dubslaff; Holger Hermanns

doi:10.1145/3715340.3715442

When to Sample from Feature Diagrams?

Nikolai Käfer
, Sven Apel
, Christel Baier
, Clemens Dubslaff
, Holger Hermanns

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

4 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Uniform random sampling (URS) has many applications in configurable systems analysis. Usually, feature models consisting of a hierarchical feature diagram and additional side constraints specify the space of valid configurations to be sampled from. However, URS has predominately been applied on feature models translated a priori into conjunctive normal form (CNF). In this work, we study URS approaches that instead operate directly on feature diagrams and provide a comparative evaluation of their performance against well-established URS tools for CNF representations. Our findings suggest that translating feature models to CNF offers advantages, even in the presence of only few side constraints.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	VaMoS '25
Subtitle of host publication	Proceedings of the 19th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems
Editors	Mathieu Acher, Juliana Alves Pereira
Place of Publication	New York
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.
Pages	11-20
Number of pages	10
ISBN (Electronic)	979-8-4007-1441-2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3715340.3715442
Publication status	Published - 28 May 2025
Event	19th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems, VaMoS 2025 - Rennes, France Duration: 4 Feb 2025 → 6 Feb 2025

Conference

Conference	19th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems, VaMoS 2025
Abbreviated title	VaMoS 2025
Country/Territory	France
City	Rennes
Period	4/02/25 → 6/02/25

Funding

This work was partially supported by the NWO through Veni grant VI.Veni.222.431 and by the DFG under the projects EXC 2050/1 (CeTI, project ID 390696704, as part of Germany s Excellence Strategy) and TRR 248 (see https://perspicuous-computing.science, project ID 389792660).

Keywords

BDDs
Feature Models
Uniform Random Sampling

Access to Document

10.1145/3715340.3715442

pdfFinal published version, 717 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

@inproceedings{536b390e287643cd91165cad6078096e,

title = "When to Sample from Feature Diagrams?",

abstract = "Uniform random sampling (URS) has many applications in configurable systems analysis. Usually, feature models consisting of a hierarchical feature diagram and additional side constraints specify the space of valid configurations to be sampled from. However, URS has predominately been applied on feature models translated a priori into conjunctive normal form (CNF). In this work, we study URS approaches that instead operate directly on feature diagrams and provide a comparative evaluation of their performance against well-established URS tools for CNF representations. Our findings suggest that translating feature models to CNF offers advantages, even in the presence of only few side constraints.",

keywords = "BDDs, Feature Models, Uniform Random Sampling",

author = "Nikolai K{\"a}fer and Sven Apel and Christel Baier and Clemens Dubslaff and Holger Hermanns",

year = "2025",

month = may,

day = "28",

doi = "10.1145/3715340.3715442",

language = "English",

pages = "11--20",

editor = "Mathieu Acher and \{Alves Pereira\}, Juliana",

booktitle = "VaMoS '25",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.",

address = "United States",

note = "19th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems, VaMoS 2025, VaMoS 2025 ; Conference date: 04-02-2025 Through 06-02-2025",

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Käfer, N, Apel, S, Baier, C, Dubslaff, C & Hermanns, H 2025, When to Sample from Feature Diagrams? in M Acher & J Alves Pereira (eds), VaMoS '25: Proceedings of the 19th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., New York, pp. 11-20, 19th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems, VaMoS 2025, Rennes, France, 4/02/25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715340.3715442

When to Sample from Feature Diagrams? / Käfer, Nikolai; Apel, Sven; Baier, Christel et al.
VaMoS '25: Proceedings of the 19th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems. ed. / Mathieu Acher; Juliana Alves Pereira. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., 2025. p. 11-20.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review