Customizing the common variability language semantics for your domain models

Abstract

The Common Variability Language (CVL) provides a well-structured mechanism to express variability and to relate this variability to any MOF-compliant model. This characteristic allows users to define the materialization of a given CVL resolution/configuration. Using variation points, it is possible to express and manipulate the links between the variability abstraction model and the base model. However, the meaning of a given variation point can vary according to the semantics of each domain. For example, a variation point that excludes an element in the base model can lead to further operations, like excluding other elements which were associated to the deleted element, or even to reassign references to another model element. Therefore, it is necessary to address this semantic variability in order to align the materialization semantics to the base model semantics. In this paper, we show how Kermeta can be used to easily implement and customize the semantics of the CVL's variation points, according to the semantics of the base model domain.