Leveraging Aspect-Connectors to Improve Stability of Product-Line Variabilities

Abstract--One of the design goals of Product Line Architectures (PLAs) is to remain stable while accommodating changes of stakeholder's requirements. However, the stability of a PLA is largely dependent on how modularized are the decisions crosscutting multiple architectural variation points. Their scattered implementation often leads to a number of side effects, such as architecture-wide modifications. This paper proposes a novel component model to encapsulate architectural variation points inside aspect-connectors, called Connector-VPs. Our component model addresses limitations of emerging aspectoriented models, such as XPIs, which do not allow a modular implementation of crosscutting variability decisions in a PLA. The role of a Connector-VP is both binding aspectuallevel components to base-level ones, and isolating crosscutting decisions at architectural variation points. We have evaluated the PLA stability designed using our solution in the presence of heterogeneous evolution...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: VAMOS
• Authors: Marcelo Oliveira Dias, Leonardo Tizzei, Ceíilia M. F. Rubira, Alessandro F. Garcia, Jaejoon Lee
• Keywords: Architectural Variation Points, Component Model, Multiple Architectural Variation, Software Engineering, VAMOS 2010