Software Product Line Engineering Basics - Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering - page 43

creating product line members by using the available core
assets (product derivation). When a product is being produced,
the management process has to evaluate whether it is a
new product or a product in the scope. If the product is
not covered by the scope, the normal strategy is to review
the domain engineering to extend the scope and to review
the production plan; this is a reactive process. However, in
some cases, a lightweight approach is possible where the
application engineering becomes a complete software process,
as in solution-oriented product lines. It consists of analyzing
the new requirements, building the needed assets, re-using
some artifacts from the core assets, and composing - all trying
to conform to the production plan.This has the drawback of not
capitalizing on the core assets and on the domain scope.
2.7.1. Product configuration
In SPL engineering, during the product configuration
activity, product designers are responsible for configuring
particular product line members by choosing sets of valid
combinations of variants identified at the domain engineering
process.
D EFINITION 2.9.- Product configuration is the process of
selecting a valid and complete set of variants to bind to the
variation points.
In order to build a product, the product designer selects
the variants to include in his product. Some variants may be
incompatible, some others may have requirement constraints
that need to be satisfied, and finally, the set of selected
variants should define a viable product. Thus, this process
needs some validation steps and also tools to assist in the
configuration and validation. Some tools already incorporate
feature model design,validation,and verification,such as pure
variants [PUR 10]. However, there is a recent and active
research area and useful techniques should be transferred
from academic to commercial and publicly available tools.