Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The interested reader can look at our related work in
Chapter 8. When product designers select variants to appear
in a particular product configuration is called binding time
of the variability [BAC 03, BOS 02, POH 05b]. Some
authors have identified the advantages of deciding very late
on the binding time, and, thus, making the binding time
variable [OMM 02, CZA 05, ASI 07]. The advantage of
postponing the binding time is that decisions, i.e. design or
technological decisions, may be left open very late in the
configuration and derivation processes. This adds flexibility to
the product line and decouples platform decisions from design
decisions or functional requirements.
Productconfigurationisasimpletaskwhenonlyconsidering
basic feature modeling. However, it becomes tricky with new
feature models allowing cardinality, groups, and constraints.
One problem is the volume of the information to manage,
but maybe the most crucial issue is to define inconsistent
configurations. Product configurators are artifacts defined to
support the creation of product configurations. The basic
functionality of a configurator is to facilitate the creation of
valid configurations from given variability models. According
to Asikainen et al . “a configurator must make deductions
based on the requirements the product designer has entered
so far, and prevents or discourages the designer from making
incompatible choices” [ASI 07]. Different configurators have
been proposed to support product configuration at different
stages of the activity, e.g. [ASI 07,ANT 04,WAG 05, POH 06b].
One example of a product configurator using feature models
is the FeaturePlugin [ANT 04], a feature modeling plug-in for
the Eclipse Platform. The tool supports configuration based
on feature models that conform to Czarnecki et al .'s feature
metamodel from Figure 3.3. This configurator implements
cardinality-based featuremodeling,whichincludesfeatureand
group cardinalities, and feature attributes. In Chapter 6 we
presenttheproductconfiguratorwecreatedtosupportourMD-
SPL approach.
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