Multistage Model Transformations in Software Product Lines

Raising the level of abstraction for software engineers to write applications is still an undergoing issue. So, models will most likely become the dominant artifact in the development of software. However, models are nothing without the framing of a methodology, like the software factories methodology, which includes the software product lines approach. In the context of software product lines, model-driven development imposes the structuring of the software development process around models adequate to each one of the moments within the software supply chain. The different moments are the different stages that comprise different development teams, as well as the target user of the different software family members. This multistage process is a powerful vision of software development in general when compared with the current software development processes´ state-of-the-art and this is the vision that feeds the Ph.D. work presented in this paper. This work is concerned with the transformations that models must suffer in the particular context of software product lines development, inside each stage and in between stages.