Customizing software to perfectly fit individual needs is becoming increasingly important in information systems engineering. Users want to be able to customize software behavior through reference to terms familiar to their experience and needs. In this paper, we present a requirements-driven approach to behavioral customization of software. Goal models are constructed to represent alternative behaviors that users can exhibit to achieve their goals. Customization information is then added to restrict the space of possibilities to those that fit specific users, contexts or situations. Meanwhile, elements of the goal model are mapped to units of source code. This way, customization preferences posed at the requirements level are directly translated into system customizations. Ourapproach, which we apply to an on-line shopping cart system, does not assume adoption of a particular development methodology, platform or variability implementation technique and keeps the reasoning computation overhead from interfering with execution of the configured application.

Download paper in PDF format.

The documents distributed by this server have been provided by the contributing authors as a means to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work on a noncommercial basis. Copyright and all rights therein are maintained by the authors or by other copyright holders, notwithstanding that they have offered their works here electronically. It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.