Tailoring dynamic software product lines

Abstract

Software product lines (SPLs) and adaptive systems aim at variability to cope with changing requirements. Variability can be described in terms of features , which are central for development and configuration of SPLs. In traditional SPLs, features are bound statically before runtime. By contrast, adaptive systems support feature binding at runtime and are sometimes called dynamic SPLs (DSPLs) . DSPLs are usually built from coarse-grained components, which reduces the number of possible application scenarios. To overcome this limitation, we closely integrate static binding of traditional SPLs and runtime adaptation of DSPLs. We achieve this integration by statically generating a tailor-made DSPL from a highly customizable SPL. The generated DSPL provides only the runtime variability required by a particular application scenario and the execution environment. The DSPL supports self-configuration based on coarse-grained modules. We provide a feature-based adaptation mechanism that reduces the effort of computing an optimal configuration at runtime. In a case study, we demonstrate the practicability of our approach and show that a seamless integration of static binding and runtime adaptation reduces the complexity of the adaptation process.

A core calculus for dynamic delta-oriented programming

“…They also use transformation rules on feature models to provide composition safety of dynamic binding. Rosenmüller et al [2011b] extend their approach to support runtime adaptation and self-configuration on top of flexible binding units. They use feature-based adaptation rules to describe SPL adaptation in a declarative way.…”