Handling complex configurations in software product lines: a tooled approach

As Software Product Lines (SPLs) are now more widely applied in new application fields such as IT or Web systems, complex and large-scale configurations have to be handled. In these fields, the strong domain orientation leads to the need to manage interrelated SPLs and multiple instances of configured sub-products, resulting in complex configurations that cannot be easily represented by simple sets of features. In this paper we propose a tooled approach to manage such SPLs through a domain model that interrelates several feature models in a consistent way. The approach thus shifts part of the domain knowledge to the problem space and supports the derivation of complex configurations with multiple instantiations and associations of sub-products. We also report on the application of our approach to an industrial-strength software development in the field of digital signage.