Aspect-Oriented Feature Definitions in Model-Driven Product Line Engineering

Software engineering methods and tools are available and well understood for developing single systems. Most companies however stay within the same domain from project to project or sell products in the same market segment for years. For these companies to be competitive it is essential to reuse artefacts from one product in another in order to improve time to market, achieve systematic reuse goals and improve their product quality. In order to benefit from mass customization it is essential to get control over diverse product configurations. A software product line is a set of software-intensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market segment or mission and that are developed from a common set of core assets in a prescribed way [1]. Basically, product line engineering is about exploiting commonalities among a set of systems while managing the variabilities among them in order to exploit the above mentioned benefits.