Authors:
Thomas Buchmann
and
Felix Schwägerl
Affiliation:
University of Bayreuth, Germany
Keyword(s):
Software Product Lines, Model-Driven Development, Unconstrained Variability, Information Loss, Negative Variability, Application Engineering.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Cross-Feeding between Data and Software Engineering
;
Model-Driven Engineering
;
Software Engineering
;
Software Engineering Methods and Techniques
Abstract:
Model-driven software product line engineering is an integrating discipline for which tool support has become
available recently. However, existing tools are still immature and have several weaknesses. Among
others, limitations in variability, caused by meta model restrictions, and unintended information loss are not
addressed. In this paper, we present two conceptual extensions to model-driven product line engineering
based on negative variability, being alternative mappings and surrogates. Alternative mappings allow for unconstrained
variability, mitigating meta model restrictions by virtually extending the underlying multi-variant
domain model. Surrogates prevent unintended information loss during product derivation based on a contextsensitive
product analysis, which can be controlled by a declarative OCL-based language. Both extensions
have been implemented in FAMILE, a model-driven product line tool that is based on EMF, provides dedicated
consistency repair mechanisms,
and completely automates application engineering. The added value of
alternative mappings and surrogates is demonstrated by a running example.
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