Managing and Modeling Variability of UML Based FORM Architectures Through Feature-Architecture Mapping

FORM(Feature-Oriented Reuse Method) is one of representative product line engineering methods. The essence of FORM is the FORM architecture models, which can be reused in the development of multiple products of a software product line. The FORM architecture models, however, have the following problems when applied in practice. First, they are not standardized models like UML(Unified Modeling Language) and therefore they can be constructed only through a specific modeling tool. Second, they do not represent architectural variability explicitly. Instead their variability is only managed through a mapping from a feature model. To address these two problems, we developed at first a method for representing the FORM architecture models using UML, which enables the FORM architecture models to be constructed through various available UML modeling tools. Also, we developed an effective method for representing as well as managing the variability of the FORM architecture models through a mapping from a feature model.