Systems and software product line engineering with SysML, UML and the IBM Rational Rhapsody BigLever Gears Bridge

Introduction The key to business success depends on the infusion of new ideas for how products are brought to market. To achieve this goal, today's software-based product development organizations must deliver a product line—a portfolio of similar products with variations in features and functions—rather than just an individual product. A new approach referred to as software product lines (SPL), or more precisely systems and software product line engineering and delivery, has emerged to enable organizations to develop, deliver and evolve an entire product line portfolio, through each stage of the development lifecycle, with much higher degrees of efficiency than has been possible before. IBM® Rational® and BigLever Software have joined forces to help provide an innovative and pragmatic new SPL solution, offering organizations the infrastructure, tools, best practices and methods needed to create the industry's most advanced and efficient means of production for their software-based product lines. Similar to what is seen in manufacturing, companies that invest in a more efficient means of production for SPL engineering and delivery can get the help they need to make a discontinuous jump in productivity, quality, time-to-market and product line scalability. SysML, UML and the IBM Rational Rhapsody BigLever Gears Bridge Highlights SPL engineering helps provide the ability to efficiently and effectively create, maintain and evolve a portfolio of similar products with the simplicity of a single system rather than the complexity of deploying a multitude of products. This report focuses on one of these integrations, the Rational Rhapsody/ BigLever Software Gears Bridge. The Rational Rhapsody/Gears Bridge extends the abstraction, comprehension and communication benefits provided by model-driven development (MDD) with SPL capabilities to capitalize on product line commonality and variation. The Rhapsody/Gears Bridge provides SPL extensions for both SysML systems modeling and UML software modeling. Rational Rhapsody/Gears Bridge is to capitalize on a strong synergy that results by combining MDD and Software Product Line engineering. MDD is known for its ability to accelerate system and software development by leveraging the higher level of abstraction provided by the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the Systems Modeling Language (SysML). These two modeling languages, UML and SysML, are the Object Management Group's (OMG) domain-specific languages for software development and embedded systems engineering. SPL engineering helps provide the ability to efficiently and effectively create, maintain and evolve a portfolio of similar products with the simplicity of a single system rather than the complexity of deploying a multitude …