Model-driven derivation of product architectures

Product Derivation is one of the central activities in Software Product Lines (SPL). One of the main challenges of the process of product derivation is dealing with complexity, which is caused by the large number of artifacts and dependencies between them. Another major challenge is maximizing development efficiency and reducing time-to-market, while at the same time producing high quality products. One approach to overcome these challenges is to automate the derivation process. To this end, this paper focuses on one particular activity of the derivation process; the derivation of the product-specific architecture and describes how this activity can be automated using a model-driven approach. The approach derives the product-specific architecture by selectively copying elements from the product-line architecture. The decision, which elements are included in the derived architecture, is based on a product-specific feature configuration. We present a prototype that implements the derivation as a model transformation described in the Atlas Transformation Language (ATL). We conclude with a short overview of related work and directions for future research.