Applying a Consistency Checking Framework for Heterogeneous Models and Artifacts in Industrial Product Lines

摘要

Product line engineering relies on heterogeneous models and artifacts to define and implement the product line's reusable assets. The complexity and heterogeneity of product line artifacts as well as their interdependencies make it hard to maintain consistency during development and evolution, regardless of the modeling approaches used. Engineers thus need support for detecting and resolving inconsistencies within and between the various artifacts. In this paper we present a framework for checking and maintaining consistency of arbitrary product line artifacts. Our approach is flexible and extensible regarding the supported artifact types and the definition of constraints. We discuss tool support developed for the DOPLER product line tool suite. We report the results of applying the approach to sales support applications of industrial product lines.