MSDeveloper: A Variability-Guided Methodology for Microservice-Based Development

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. The complex software development without human-written code.  There are no-code or low-code development environments, however, they fall short of supporting large scale development starting from  requirements.  They have been developed mostly for specific domains.  Also, the existing solutions provide rather generic solutions: any serious development still requires major manual code writing by humans.  This research presents the infrastructure to cater to all-domains with minimal human input at code-level. The topic is very original and lays the foundation for a disruptive development in software engineering.  The two gaps it addresses are a)  domain-generic low-code or no-code development and b)  elevating variability management to the top-level modeling/development.

2. Actually there is quite scarcity in the main subject area that is low-code development.  There are quite a number of commercial tools that demonstrate some success in the market, while not publishing their capabilities or infrastructure.  The field is growing without major contributions from academic foundations. This research suggests the practical development in an effort to provide the genericity and the promotion of Variability Modeling.

3. The manuscript has laid out a sensible methodology to achieve the goals.  The research is performed with academic considerations and provides sufficient "proof of concept" for the practical goal of tool development. After publication, authors should consider to further  validate their software in the industry setting. I see a big potential for success, depending on the immediate future work with more commercial  tools and wider experimentation.  

4. One strong aspect of this research is its being supported with the expert opinion from considerable (by expertise and by number) contributors besides the general evaluations by the participants on the experimentation.  The results support the claims as far as the proof of concept work is considered within the scope of this research.

5. references are adequate.  They cover sufficient references in the area of low-code development despite the scarcity in the current literature.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This article aims to address the key problem of reducing unnecessary costs in developing software systems. Low-cost development, also has been termed model-based development, is a promising approach to accomplish this goal.

This paper is well written and very readable. It has both theoretical and practical component. The article has an empirical evaluation. It contains also experts review, that I appreciate; Studies only based on student evaluation are not adequate. This paper contains both. 

The domain of the example is not too specialized. That is a good aspect of this article.

I am therefore in favor of accepting this article. However,  I have some remarks to be considered:

Introduction

Introduction gives a good overview of the issues. It could be improved by making the novel contributions of the paper more explicit. I think, in particular, more emphasis could be given on the adoption of SPLE approach with low-cost development.

Background

The readability of the second paragraph could be improved. Too many that’s and ‘:’.

Related work

‘[2] proposed a conceptual comparative framework’

I would not start a sentence with a reference.

4. MS developer

How can you assure that a configuration process of a variability model results in a consistent process model?

Similarly, how can you assure that the microservice model is consistent after mapping from the process model? Through iteration?

If you could give more information about the mapping process, the article would be more understandable.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf