Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering - Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering - page 105

of required software components for periodically checking
temperature inside a room.
Decisions on how to separate concerns (how many views to
define, how are they related, and so on) are strongly linked
to the application domain and the variability identified in
the SPL under development. That is why one of the most
important characteristics in an MD-SPL approach is that it
facilitates and supports the separation of concerns in as many
views as required. For instance, the elements concerned with
security facilities could be separated if the requirements of the
product line demand it. Product designers could then select the
security profile for a product line member under configuration.
For this, it is mandatory that the MD-SPL approach provide
mechanisms for managing several points of view according to
the identified variability.
In our application example of Smart-Home systems, we
only take into account those points of view related to the
architectural structure of buildings, habitat facilities, and
software architecture designs.The approach we present in this
chapter provides the mechanisms to capture other concerns in
separated models if required; for example, views of behavior
such as those we can capture with message sequence charts
or state charts (see [ZIA 06] for a related approach), or views
to capture and express other issues such as performance,
distribution, or concurrency.
4.2.2. Capturing variability and configuring products
An MD-SPL approach must establish how to represent
the several points of view involved with product line
members. Metamodeling and feature modeling are the most
common mechanisms used in MDE and SPLE, respectively,
for capturing and expressing variability. Both metamodeling
and feature modeling can be used for capturing not only
structural and behavioral variations, but also functional and