Domain analysis

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In software engineering, domain analysis, or product line analysis, is the process of analyzing related software systems in a domain to find their common and variable parts. The term was coined in the early 1980s by James Neighbors. Domain analysis is the first phase of domain engineering. It is a key method for realizing systematic software reuse.

Several methods for domain analysis have been proposed. Each produces domain models such as feature tables, facet tables, facet templates, and generic architectures. A generic architecture describes all of the systems in a domain. [Frakes and Kang, 2005] ^[1] provides an overview of proposed methodologies for domain analysis.

The products, or "artifacts," of a domain analysis are sometimes object-oriented models (represented with the Unified Modeling Language (UML)) and/or data models (represented with entity-relationship diagrams (ERD)). Software developers use these models as a basis for the implementation of software architectures and applications. This approach to domain analysis is sometimes called model driven engineering.

In library science, the term "domain analysis" was suggested in 1995 by Birger Hjørland and H. Albrechtsen.^[2][3]

References

1. ^ Frakes, W.B. and Kyo Kang, (2005), "Software Reuse Research: Status and Future", IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 31(7), July, pp. 529-536.
2. ^ B. Hjørland, H. Albrechtsen, "Toward a New Horizon in Information Science: Domain-Analysis", Journal of the American Society for Information Science, No. 6, vol. 46 (1995), pp. 400-425
3. ^ Birger Hjørland's definition of domain analysis

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