Automatic query reformulations for feature location in a model-based family of software products

No maintenance activity can be completed without Feature Location (FL), which is finding the set of software artifacts that realize a particular functionally. Despite the importance of FL, the vast majority of work has been focused on retrieving code, whereas other software artifacts such as the models have been neglected. Furthermore, locating a piece of information from a query in a large repository is a challenging task as it requires knowledge of the vocabulary used in the software artifacts. This can be alleviated by automatically reformulating the query (adding or removing terms). In this paper, we test four existing query reformulation techniques, which perform the best for FL in code but have never been used for FL in models. Specifically, we test these techniques in two industrial domains: a model-based family of firmwares for induction hobs, and a model-based family of PLC software to control trains. We compare the results provided by our FL approach using the query and the reformulated queries by means of statistical analysis. Our results show that reformulated queries do not improve the performance in models, which could lead towards a new direction in the creation or reconsideration of these techniques to be applied in models.