Model Superimposition in Software Product Lines

kaestner@cs.cmu.edu (S. Apel, F. Janda, S. Trujillo, C. Kästner)
Fri, 10 Jan 2025 13:48:21 GMT

Sven Apel, Florian Janda, Salvador Trujillo, and Christian Kästner. Model Superimposition in Software Product Lines. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Model Transformation (ICMT), ISBN 978-3-642-02407-8, pages 4--19, Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, June 2009.

In software product line engineering, feature composition generates software tailored to specific requirements from a common set of artifacts. Superimposition is a popular technique to merge code pieces belonging to different features. The advent of model-driven development raises the question of how to support the variability of software product lines in modeling techniques. We propose to use superimposition as a model composition technique in order to support variability. We analyze the feasibility of superimposition as a model composition technique, offer a corresponding tool for model composition, and discuss our experiences with three case studies (including one industrial study) using this tool.