Modeling Dependent Software Product Lines

Abstract

Software product line development is a mature technique to implementsimilar programs tailored to serve the needs of multipleusers while providing a high degree of reuse. This approach alsoscales for larger product lines that use smaller product lines to fulfillspecial tasks. In such compositions of SPLs, the interacting productlines depend on each other and programs generated from theseproduct lines have to be correctly configured to ensure correct communicationbetween them. Constraints between product lines canbe used to allow only valid combinations of generated programs.This, however, is not sufficient if multiple instances of one productline are involved. In this paper we present an approach that usesUML and OO concepts to model compositions of SPLs. The modelextends the approach of constraints between SPLs to constraints betweeninstances of SPLs and integrates SPL specialization. Basedon this model we apply a feature-oriented approach to simplify theconfiguration of complete SPL compositions.