An integration of product-line engineering and model-driven development makes the full automation feasible

Abstract

A Product Line (PL) is a set of products (applications) that share common assets in a domain. Product Line Engineering (PLE) is a set of principles, techniques, mechanisms, and processes that enables the realization of produce lines. Core assets, the common assets, are created and instantiated to make products in PLE. Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is a new software development paradigm which emphasizes its feasibility with automatically developing product by using model transformation. Therefore, we can get advantages of both two paradigms, PLE and MDA, as core assets are represented as PIM in MDA with predefined automatic mechanism. In this paper, we introduce a framework for automating software development in PLE using MDA. In the framework, we suggest a process which is based on PLE process and in which MDA techniques are applied. To effectively apply the given process, the proposed process should be augmented with a supporting tool in order to fully automate software production. Finally, our tool with PLE, MDA, and Eclipse techniques is used to improve productivity, applicability, maintainability and quality of product through automation.