Towards the Automatic Resolution of Architectural Variability in Software Product Line Architectures through Model Transformations

Modelling variability in software product lines (SPL) development is receiving a lot of attention in current years, building on the idea that product derivation could be automatically derived from a product line through model transformations. Software Product Line development involves the explicit management of variability that has to be encompassed by the software artifacts, in particular by the software architecture. This variability has to be supported and represented by the architecture. The Common Variability Language (CVL) allows to represent such variability independently of the Architecture Description Language (ADL). In this research work we define a set of model transformations to support the resolution of the product architecture variability in an automated way by using the Atlas Transformation Language (ATL). The transformation takes as input a multimodel which allows us to represent the relationships between the external variability, represented by a feature model, the architectural variability, represented by the CVL model, and the non-functional requirements, represented in a quality model and generates as output the CVL resolution model that represents the product architecture’s variability resolution.