A Metamodeling Approach to Tracing Variability between Requirements and Architecture in Software Product Lines

Even in traditional single software product development, failure to manage changes in requirements can cause degeneration of the architecture and components. Traceability issues are even more important in the product line because the impact of changes in a product line can involve all the product line-based applications. Variability means the ability of a software system to be changed, customized or configured for use in a particular context and it should be managed at different levels of abstraction. In this paper, we suggest a metamodeling approach to support the tracing of the variability in requirements and architecture. Two metamodels representing the domain requirements and domain architecture with variability are proposed. Based on the proposed metamodels, we describe trace relationships between requirements and architecture with respect to variability.