Migrating a container terminal equipment control system to a software product line using extractive and phased approach

Abstract

Software reuse has been researched almost as long as software has existed. Still many companies do not invest in good software reuse methods until they already have several similar products that are being separately maintained. Migrating these software products to utilize reusable components and maintaining them centrally can be a daunting task, and there are only a few tools to help in the process and they haven’t yet seen wide-spread adoption. Software product lines are one method for planned reuse that have been proven efficient tools in reducing time-to-market and costs, when implemented correctly. However, it can be difficult and requires commitment and monetary investment from the organization. In this thesis, the steps for migrating a part of a large application into a software product line are explained. The goal of this thesis is to lay out the steps in a clear manner and to provide an example on how an incremental migration can bring some the advantages of software product lines with low-risk. The component being migrated is a part of control systems for container handling equipment from a maritime container terminal. The thesis consists of three main parts. Information collection and research, designing the software product line and implementing the software product line to develop an example module. Future development directions are also considered and a brief research was made to compare suitable communication technologies for separating the designed software product line module into a standalone application from the larger control system entity. The work done for this thesis was successful in the sense that applying the designed software product line components to build the pilot application was easy, but the real successfulness can only be measured in the future once the created designs and components have been reused multiple times.