VML* – A Family of Languages for Variability Management in Software Product Lines | SpringerLink
Skip to main content

VML* – A Family of Languages for Variability Management in Software Product Lines

  • Conference paper
Software Language Engineering (SLE 2009)

Abstract

Managing variability is a challenging issue in software-product-line engineering. A key part of variability management is the ability to express explicitly the relationship between variability models (expressing the variability in the problem space, for example using feature models) and other artefacts of the product line, for example, requirements models and architecture models. Once these relations have been made explicit, they can be used for a number of purposes, most importantly for product derivation, but also for the generation of trace links or for checking the consistency of a product-line architecture. This paper bootstraps techniques from product-line engineering to produce a family of languages for variability management for easing the creation of new members of the family of languages. We show that developing such language families is feasible and demonstrate the flexibility of our language family by applying it to the development of two variability-management languages.

The work reported in this paper was supported by the EC FP7 STREP project AMPLE: Aspect-Oriented Model-Driven Product Line Engineering (www.ample-project.net).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
¥17,985 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
JPY 3498
Price includes VAT (Japan)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
JPY 5719
Price includes VAT (Japan)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
JPY 7149
Price includes VAT (Japan)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Pohl, K., et al.: Software Product Line Engineering: Foundations, Principles and Techniques. Springer, Berlin (2005)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Clements, P., Northrop, L.M.: Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns. Addison-Wesley, Boston (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Czarnecki, K., Eisenecker, U.W.: Generative Programming: Methods, Tools, and Applications. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Kang, K., et al.: Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA) Feasibility Study. Software Engineering Institute, Technical report, CMU/SEI-90-TR-0211990

    Google Scholar 

  5. Alférez, M., et al.: A Model-Driven Approach for Software Product Lines Requirements Engineering. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, San Francisco Bay, USA, July 2008, pp. 779–784 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Czarnecki, K., Antkiewicz, M.: Mapping Features to Models: A Template Approach Based on Superimposed Variants. In: Glück, R., Lowry, M. (eds.) GPCE 2005. LNCS, vol. 3676, pp. 422–437. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Heidenreich, F., et al.: FeatureMapper: mapping features to models. Presented at the Companion of the 30th international conference on Software engineering, Leipzig, Germany (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Batory, D., Azanza, M., Saraiva, J.: The Objects and Arrows of Computational Design. In: Czarnecki, K., Ober, I., Bruel, J.-M., Uhl, A., Völter, M. (eds.) MODELS 2008. LNCS, vol. 5301, pp. 1–20. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Soares, S., et al.: Supporting software product lines development: FLiP - product line derivation tool. Presented at the Companion to the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems languages and applications, Nashville, TN, USA (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Ziadi, T., Jézéquel, J.M.: Software Product Line Engineering with the UML: Deriving Products. In: Software Product Lines 2006, pp. 557–588 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Botterweck, G., et al.: Model-Driven Derivation of Product Architectures. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), Atlanta, Georgia, USA, November 2007, pp. 469–472 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Sánchez, P., et al.: Engineering Languages for Specifying Product-Derivation Processes in Software Product Lines. Presented at the Software Language Engineering 2008, Toulouse, France (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Loughran, N., Sánchez, P., Garcia, A., Fuentes, L.: Language Support for Managing Variability in Architectural Models. In: Pautasso, C., Tanter, É. (eds.) SC 2008. LNCS, vol. 4954, pp. 36–51. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Voelter, M., Groher, I.: Product Line Implementation using Aspect-Oriented and Model-Driven Software Development. In: Procceedings of the 11th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC), Kyoto, Japan, September 2007, pp. 233–242 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Czarnecki, K., Eisenecker, U.W.: Generative Programming: Methods, Tools, and Applications. Addison-Wesley, Reading (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Jayaraman, P., Whittle, J., Elkhodary, A.M., Gomaa, H.: Model Composition in Product Lines and Feature Interaction Detection Using Critical Pair Analysis. In: Engels, G., Opdyke, B., Schmidt, D.C., Weil, F. (eds.) MODELS 2007. LNCS, vol. 4735, pp. 151–165. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Jouault, F., Kurtev, I.: Transforming Models with ATL. In: Bruel, J.-M. (ed.) MoDELS 2005. LNCS, vol. 3844, pp. 128–138. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. OpenArchitectureWare, http://www.openarchitectureware.org/

  19. Taentzer, G.: AGG: A Graph Transformation Environment for Modeling and Validation of Software. In: Pfaltz, J.L., Nagl, M., Böhlen, B. (eds.) AGTIVE 2003. LNCS, vol. 3062, pp. 446–453. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Czarnecki, K., Helsen, S., Eisenecker, U.W.: Staged Configuration Using Feature Models. In: Nord, R.L. (ed.) SPLC 2004. LNCS, vol. 3154, pp. 266–283. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Volter, M., Stahl, T.: Model-Driven Software Development. Wiley, Glasgow (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  22. VML* Download, http://www.steffen-zschaler.de/publications/vmlstar/

  23. Alférez, M., et al.: A Metamodel for Aspectual Requirements Modelling and Composition, AMPLE D1.3 (2007), http://ample.holos.pt/gest_cnt_upload/editor/File/public/AMPLE_WP1_D13.pdf

  24. Alférez, M., et al.: Multi-View Composition Language for Software Product Line Requirements. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Int. Conference on Software Language Engineering (SLE), Denver, USA (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Sousa, A.: AMPLE Traceability Framework Frontend Manual (2008), http://ample.di.fct.unl.pt/Front-End_Framework/ATF%20Front-end%20Manual.pdf

  26. Generative Software Development Group, U. Waterloo, Feature Modelling Plugin (FMP) for Eclipse, http://gsd.uwaterloo.ca/projects/fmp-plugin/

  27. VML* Download (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Kotonya, G., Sommerville, I.: Requirements Engineering: Processes and Techniques. John Wiley, Chichester (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Ian, S., Pete, S.: Requirements Engineering: A Good Practice Guide. John Wiley and Sons, Chichester (1997)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  30. Young, T.: Using AspectJ to Build a Software Product Line for Mobile Devices. University of Waterloo (2005), www.cs.ubc.ca/grads/resources/thesis/Nov05/Trevor_Young.pdf

  31. Voelter, M.: A Family of Languages for Architecture Description. Presented at the Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, Orlando, Florida (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Akehurst, D.H., et al.: Supporting OCL as part of a Family of Languages. In: Proceedings of the MoDELS 2005 Conference Workshop on Tool Support for OCL and Related Formalisms - Needs and Trends (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Visser, E.: WebDSL: A Case Study in Domain-Specific Language Engineering. In: Lämmel, R., Visser, J., Saraiva, J. (eds.) Generative and Transformational Techniques in Software Engineering II. LNCS, vol. 5235, pp. 291–373. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  34. Haugen, Ø., et al.: Adding Standardized Variability to Domain Specific Languages. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Software Product Lines (SPLC 2008), pp. 139–148 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Batory, D., et al.: Scaling Step-Wise Refinement. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 355–371 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Fuentes, L., et al.: Feature-Oriented Model-Driven Software Product Lines: The TENTE approach. In: Proceedings of the Forum of the 21st International Conference on Advanced Information Systems (CAiSE), Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Thaker, S., et al.: Safe Composition of Product Lines. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE), Salzburg, Austria, pp. 95–104 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Janota, M., Botterweck, G.: Formal Approach to Integrating Feature and Architecture Models. In: Fiadeiro, J.L., Inverardi, P. (eds.) FASE 2008. LNCS, vol. 4961, pp. 31–45. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  39. MOFScript, http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/mofscript/

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Zschaler, S. et al. (2010). VML* – A Family of Languages for Variability Management in Software Product Lines. In: van den Brand, M., Gašević, D., Gray, J. (eds) Software Language Engineering. SLE 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5969. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12107-4_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12107-4_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-12106-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-12107-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics