Licentiate thesis

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I defended my licentiate thesis in Februari 2001 in Ronneby. A licentiate degree is a Swedish title which is usually obtained half-way the full Ph. D. While not recognized outside of Scandinavia, it is a milestone and I think the thesis I wrote for it is a nice piece of work.

My thesis consists of an introduction and four articles (which by now have all been published in one form or another).

Variability in Software Systems:
The Key to Software Reuse

Abstract

Reuse of software assets has been, and continues to be the holy grail of software engineering. In this thesis we argue that a prerequisite for reusability is variability. In order to reuse a piece of software, it needs to be adapted to the environment in which it will be reused. With the arrival of object oriented frameworks and software product lines, variability and the associated variability techniques are becoming more and more important. In this thesis, four papers are included that all, in some way, are related to variability. In the introduction we discuss object oriented frameworks and software product lines; we introduce a conceptual model for reasoning about variability; we take a closer look at so called late variability and examine the consequences of variability for the development process of software product lines and software product line based applications.

Thesis

  • A pdf can be downloaded here.
  • The presentation slides.

Errata

  • Title page: Oktober should be October
  • Acknowledgements: spelling errors are inexcusable, sorry, Susanne!
  • P1: Paper II will be published March 2001. The correct reference is: Jilles van Gurp, Jan Bosch, "Design, Implementation and Evolution of Object Oriented Frameworks: Concepts & Guidelines", Software Practice & Experience no 33(3), pp 277-300, March 2001. Due to editing after the thesis was finished, the version of this paper included with the thesis is not the most recent version. However, an online version of the latest version is available on both the journal site and my homepage (www.xs4all.nl/~jgurp). In addition, there are only minor differences between this version and the included version.
  • P1: "Both paper I and IV …" should be "Both paper I and II …"
  • P1: Paper IV has unfortunately been rejected. A revised and shortened version has been submitted to the Wicsa conference and we are working on a second, more extensive paper for submission to a suitable journal.
  • References p44: [Demyer et al. 1997] should of course be [Demeyer et al, 1997].

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