Product Model Derivation by Model Transformation in Software Product Lines

Product derivation is an essential part of the Software Product Line (SPL) development process. The paperproposes a model transformation for deriving automatically a UML model of a specific product from the UML model of a product line. This work is a part of a larger project aiming to integrate performance analysis in the SPL model-driven development. The SPL source model is expressed in UML extended with two separate profiles: a "product line" profile from literature for specifying the commonality and variability between products, and the MARTE profile recently standardized by OMG for performance annotations. The automatic derivation of a concrete product model based on a given feature configuration is enabled through the mapping between features from the feature model and their realizations in the design model. The paper proposes an efficient mapping technique that aims to minimize the amount of explicit feature annotations in the UML design model of SPL. Implicit feature mapping is inferred during product derivation from the relationships between annotated and non-annotated model elements as defined in the UML metamodel and well formedness rules. The transformation is realized in the Atlas Transformation Language (ATL) and illustrated with an ecommerce case study that models structural and behavioural SPL views.