Extending an IEEE 42010-Compliant Viewpoint-Based Engineering-Framework for Embedded Systems to Support Variant Management

The increasing complexity of today’s embedded systems and the increasing demand for higher quality require a comprehensive engineering approach. The model-based engineering approach that has been developed in the project SPES 2020 (Software Platform Embedded Systems) is intended to comprehensively support the development of embedded systems in the future. The approach allows for specifying an embedded system from different viewpoints that are artefact-based and seamlessly integrated. It is compliant with the IEEE Std. 1471 for specifying viewpoints for architectural descriptions. However, the higher demand for individual embedded software necessitates the integration of variant management into the engineering process of an embedded system. A prerequisite for the seamless integration of variant management is the explicit consideration of variability. Variability allows for developing individual software based on a set of common core assets. Yet, variability is a crosscutting concern as it affects all related engineering disciplines and artefacts across the engineering process of an embedded system. Since the IEEE Std. 1471 does not support the documentation of crosscutting aspects, we apply the concept of perspectives to IEEE Std. 1471’s successor (IEEE Std. 42010) in order to extend the SPES engineering approach to support continuous variant management.