The project has been in development for more than 6 years in collaboration with different German and Austrian universities.
University of Seville professor and Diverso Lab coordinator David Benavides has led a consortium that has been working since 2018 and has had meetings in France, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Luxembourg or Austria, in the context of MODEVAR, to develop a common variability language. The language has been named UVL: Universal Variability Language and promises to be a milestone in the development of software product lines. UVL allows modeling variability in software systems, but its applications are beyond software. UVL assists in the production of highly configurable systems such as Android, Chrome or artificial intelligence systems. These models are used both academically and industrially for the study and production of highly configurable software systems. Diverso Lab has applied it in multiple domains ranging from mobile applications or marketing automation to the customization of sensors for irrigation systems.
The language arises from a long work in the area of software product lines that has allowed the group to have national and international recognition, with several awards for work done within the laboratory: best papers at conferences, most influential papers in the area and best doctoral thesis at national level, among others. The collaboration of the book is made with researchers from Germany and Austria and has had the participation of many other universities and researchers. In addition, the University of Seville team has also recently led a repository for UVL models following the principles of open science that has contributions from the entire community and allows sharing models in an open and collaborative way.
David Benavides is a professor in the Department of Computer Languages and Systems, coordinator of the PhD program in Computer Engineering, member of the Computer Science Research Institute of the University of Seville and coordinator of Diverso Lab, has an extensive research career in this field and recently wrote the first open access book on feature models.
The publications associated with the new UVL language and the repository are accessible in open access format following EU and FECYT policies on open and citizen science.
UVL language: https://universal-variability-language.github.io/
David Benavides, Chico Sundermann, Kevin Feichtinger, José A. Galindo, Rick Rabiser and Thomas Thüm, UVL: Feature Modelling with the Universal Variability Language. Journal of Systems and Software, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2024.112326
Repository for UVL models: https://www.uvlhub.io/
David Romero-Organvidez, José A. Galindo, Chico Sundermann, Jose-Miguel Horcas, David Benavides. UVLHub: A feature model data repository using UVL and open science principles, Journal of Systems and Software, 2024,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2024.112150