Documenting variability in realisation artefacts

Abstract

Developers have to create a detailed design for each component specified in the architecture. In doing so, they document the variability provided by each component in the variability model. The variability model provides a consistent view of the available component variability and supports the configuration of components. Interfaces provide a common view of variable components and an abstraction from their internal details. They are designed in such a way that each (variable) component requiring some interface can be coupled to each component providing this interface. The internal structure of each component is documented in the class diagram. As the class diagram does not distinguish between product line variability and the variability of run-time instances, product line variability of components has to be documented in terms of variation points and variants that are linked to the variable elements of the class model. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.