The Hyper/UML Approach for Feature Based Software Design
Ilka Philippow, Matthias Riebisch, Kai Boellert · 2003
The market requests complex but adaptable software systems. There are different concepts to meet this demand, for example software reusability, component-based development, agile processes, generative programming and domain analysis. For similar products within a domain product lines are a very promising approach for shortening development time and cost and for improving quality. Software product lines combine some of the mentioned concepts. In a software product line there is a common core for all target products and variable components for building different products. Using product lines new products are created based on customer-ordered features. The feature driven development of software systems becomes more and more important not only for product lines but also for the better maintainability of software systems. Implementing variability by composition enables a partly automated development process of products. Extending composition techniques from source code to models and design support large systems and their evolution. In this paper the concept of Hyper/UML as UML extension is introduced for supporting the feature oriented separation of concerns, the feature driven design and the feature based automated generation of software products. The concept is based on the Hyperspace approach.