ArchFeature: A Modeling Environment Integrating Features into Product Line Architecture

An important task in product line architecture (PLA) modeling is developing the involved variation points and maintaining their conformance to product line features. However, existing modeling tools and approaches still require manual management of variation points and manual maintenance of feature-PLA relations, which is expensive and error prone. In this paper, we introduce a new PLA modeling environment named ArchFeature. It can automatically manage variation points in the PLA model, create and maintain feature-PLA relations, and derive new architectural instances. The key idea of ArchFeature is to develop the product line features and PLA side-by-side in the same environment, and integrate their specifications in a single model. The goal is to reduce the modeling effort and increase the quality of the PLA models.