Reusing Your Favourite Analysis Framework to Handle Workflows of Product Line Models

Abstract

Model management frameworks support a wide array of analyses, transformations, and workflows, but lack native support for handling product lines of models. Yet the ubiquity of domains that heavily use model-driven techniques and are built using product lines, such as automotive, require adaptation, or lifting, of model management frameworks to be variability-aware. Lifting might introduce new implementation and validation costs, especially in safety-critical contexts. To facilitate the implementation and validation of variability-aware model management workflows, this paper provides a novel taxonomy of lifting methods. We compare the lifting methods in their capacity to reuse existing components and validation results. We then define a general framework for lifting and validating model management workflows, and report on an experience of lifting and validating modeling tasks and workflows in an existing Eclipse-based model management framework.