Conclusion - Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering - page 243

configurations and bindings of the binding models. Aspects,
which are responsible for the scheduling of rules associated
with variations query the binding model to get the precise
elementimpactedbytherule.Thedecisionmetamodelhasbeen
extended to allow for deriving products taking into account
binding models.
Asetofplug-inshasbeendefinedtosupportthemetamodels
required by the FieSta approach. The approach and the tools
areillustratedintwocasestudies.Thefirstone,thesmarthome
system,is a classic in product line engineering.The second one
is typical of many business applications where variations are
important for presentation,persistence,or interoperability,but
where computation and control are quite simple or standard.
This is a simple stand-alone,yet generic,application managing
data collection.
9.2. MD-SPL engineering
Today, software engineers need to be aware about modern
development techniques such as the ones discussed in this
topic. As summarized in the previous section, there are
important advantages of using SPL and MDE; however, the
total amount of benefits is greater than the sum of its parts.
Nevertheless, this engineering is complex and tricky. The first
step is to acquire the SPL and MDE principles and to merge
thembothinaconsistentandefficientway.Thegeneralprocess
presented in Chapter 4 is a compound from metamodels and
models to capture domain scope and product configuration.
Transformationrulesanddecisionmodelsareusedtoautomate
the production plan. We analyze some related issues: multiple
points of view, multiple variability models, and multi-stage
processes to model variation, to configure and to generate the
products. This first level does not allow fine-grained variations
and configurations.
The second level is to introduce a way to take into account
specific features at the level of metamodel instances. This