Tools Support - Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering - page 159

support, we chose EMF as the modeling framework, which
means we express all our metamodels based on the Ecore
meta-metamodel (see section 3.5.1). We opted to use oAW as
our model transformation engine. We selected oAW because,
as presented before in section 3.6.3, this is a complete MDE
framework integrated with Eclipse that makes the reading,
instantiation,checking,and transformation of models possible.
oAW has been used successfully to create SPLs, and there is
an active community of SPL and MDE developers using and
improving it.
The entire FieSta toolkit, the instructions for installing
it, and the two case studies can be found on the Website
[ARB].
6.2. The FieSta process
The UML activity diagram in Figure 6.1 presents
the general overview of the software process for FieSta.
Domain engineering and application engineering organize the
activities. For domain engineering, we built tools to support
product line architects in the creation of a special type of
Eclipse project, MD-SPL project. An MD-SPL project
includes the required oAW and EMF dependencies to
create MD-SPLs and define a preliminary hierarchical folder
structure to manage and centralize the core assets used
to derive products. Then, architects can create and manage
domain metamodels , feature models , and constraint
models in a common repository, which captures and expresses
the possible fine-grained variations affecting the product
line. Product line architects also create transformation
rules and decision models , which are transformed into
(executable) model transformation workflows .
The automated production chain is implemented via
model transformations and generated during domain
engineering from the decision model. Its execution is