Documenting application-specific adaptations in software product line engineering

Abstract

Software product line engineering distinguishes between two types of development processes: domain engineering and application engineering. In domain engineering software artefacts are developed for reuse. In application engineering domain artefacts are reused to create specific applications. Application engineers often face the problem that individual customer needs cannot be satisfied completely by reusing domain artefacts and thus application-specific adaptations are required. Either the domain artefacts or the application artefacts need to be modified to incorporate the application-specific adaptations. We consider the case that individual customer needs are realised by adapting the application artefacts and propose a technique for maintaining traceability between the adapted application artefacts and the domain artefacts. The traceable documentation of application-specific adaptations is facilitated by an application variability model (AVM) which records the differences between the domain artefacts and the application artefacts of a particular application. The approach is formalised using graph transformations. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.