Software Product Line Engineering Basics - Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering - page 25

The objective of this application example is to generate
software applications that simulate the interactions and
behaviors of home automation systems.
2.3.2. Requirements of the application example
Several types of houses, different customer demands, the
need for short time-to-market, and cost saving are the main
causes for variability and create a demand for product lines
of Smart-Home systems. We characterize the product line of a
Smart-Home system according to the following three sources
of variability:
- House architectural structure. Each house has its
particular architectural structure with several floors, rooms,
stairs, doors, and windows.
- Smart-Home facilities. Each house is equipped with
several facilities related to controlled devices.
- Software architecture. Each Smart-Home system has a
technology platform integrating its devices under different
software architectures.
The objective of this application example is to develop
diverse Smart-Home systems which (1) are able to manage
particular variants of Smart-Homes and (2) only include the
necessary software components to satisfy the requirements of
Smart-Home's owners. It is not our aim to develop only one
Smart-Home system, which can be dynamically configured to
support the considered variability. The following subsections
describe in more detail the particular variants related to each
ofthethreesourcesofvariabilityconsideredinourproductline.
2.3.2.1. House architectural structure
The structure of houses is the most evident source of
variation. The description of a house includes structural
elements such as floors and rooms. In our application example,
we take into account the following structural elements: floors,