Software Product Line Engineering Basics - Model-Driven and Software Product Line Engineering - page 54

has been done (automatically or manually),then the traces are
automatically created.
2.9.6. Tool support
As in general engineering, software engineering needs
tool support. These tools can be heterogeneous and
interoperable, or they can be well-integrated in an IDE.
These tools should support all the steps of the lifecycle
and an iterative development process. SPLE adds more
challenges since it covers two complete engineering processes.
Requirements engineering can be connected with domain
analysis; requirements should be structured and organized in
a variability model.
Verification and validation of requirements engineering is
important to increase reliability and suitability of software
systems. Feature model verification and validation is a recent
and active area of research;important progress has been made
in this context. For example, the ArborCraft tool from the
AMPLE project is devoted to assist requirement analysis and
to generate a feature model. Several tools already integrate
some verifications of the feature model; for instance pure
variants. The Feature Modeling Plug-in (FMP) [ANT 04] is
a rich diagrammatic notation with cardinality, group, and
constraints. It already allows a static verification of the feature
model and checking of the constraints for a configuration.
SPLE also requires expression of variabilities and product
configurations and verification that it is a complete and
consistent assembly. As quoted in Chapter 8, the issues are
numerous, but some new techniques are emerging.
The core assets is a repository that should be managed
and browsed. To explore the core assets means to search
for a given piece of software and re-using it as such or
after some customizations. One difficulty is that artifacts are
evolving;a versioning and software configuration management