Active Componentsa Software Product Line Infrastructure

Bas Geertsema

Slinger Jansen

Information and Computing SciencesUniversity Utrecht

VARI-ARCH WorkshopAugust 23, 2010

Introductionapp for healthcare organisations

app for insurance vendors

Software Product

Population

Software Product Family

How to..

Define the variant ? (design)

Reuse the design (with small adaptations)?

Question

Which software product line infrastructure supports software product populations and step-wise refinements of software products?

Case: A Dutch ISV developing for a wide range of industriesusing an application generator

Active Components

• Very adaptive, self-describing components

• Active because invoked during derivation (empowered!)

• Domain-specific models to express variability

• Propagate variability using transformations (MDE)

Applications

• Applications consist of:component compositiondesign in domain-specific models

• Applications are incrementally defined (pos. variability)

Derivation

Variability in models

• Domain-specific modelsVariability specified close to problem domainFlexible (graph)

• Orthogonal variability modelsEase of use (features)Standardized in SPL

• Composition of componentsComponent model

Stakeholders• SPL developer

Orchestrate variability mechanismsDevelop integration framework of SPL

• Component developerDefine domain-specific meta-modelsPropagate variability in component

• Application developerDecision maker or modeler

Architectural Views

• Architecture can be expressed in a DSLarchitectural meta-models defined in the SPL

• Transformation of architectural models/viewsbased on (variability) models upon derivation

Discussion