Constraint-based feature modeling is a promising approach for object modeling. By giving the system responsibility for maintaining the various relationships among different features, the user is freed from the tedious and error prone task of maintaining these relationships by hand, making it easier to build and maintain complex feature model. However, one of the major drawbacks in current feature modeling approaches is that the modeling space coverage does not include sculptured object class. Also, feature semantics maintenance is largely ignored in many modeling systems....[ Read more ]

Constraint-based feature modeling is a promising approach for object modeling. By giving the system responsibility for maintaining the various relationships among different features, the user is freed from the tedious and error prone task of maintaining these relationships by hand, making it easier to build and maintain complex feature model. However, one of the major drawbacks in current feature modeling approaches is that the modeling space coverage does not include sculptured object class. Also, feature semantics maintenance is largely ignored in many modeling systems.

This thesis presents a framework of Unified Constraint-Based Feature Modeling Scheme (UCFM) for sculptured objects, which is a three levels hierarchical structure: The first level defined the modeling coverage of the UCFM schema, which is application specific. The second level defined the constituent object classes and constraint classes for the application. Different types of constraints and their specification are presented. The third level gives the detail specification of each object class. The feature semantics - attributes and validity conditions (depicted by constraints) are fully captured in the UCFM schema. The conformity of feature semantics is kept throughout the modeling process by employing a validity maintenance mechanism to prevent undesirable operations.

A neutral, open standard and platform independent language called Feature Markup Language is proposed to give a textual representation of the UCFM scheme. It is an application of Extensible Markup Language (XML). The declarations of FML are presented and their adequacy for representing UCFM scheme is discussed.