A Pattern-Based Modeling Approach for Software Product Line Engineering

This paper addresses the problem of variability in software product line (SPL) engineering by first considering different SPL model-based approaches and in particular the tradeoff between the development effort in domain engineering vs. application engineering. The paper then describes a SPL engineering approach, which is both model-based, and pattern-based. This approach bases the SPL software architecture on software architectural patterns and relates these patterns to SPL features. The paper describes how this approach has been applied to an unmanned space flight SPL.