VULCAN: architecture-model-based workbench for product line engineering

Adaptability and reusability are important quality attributes for software targeted for global market due to diverse market needs, ever increasing number of features, rapidly changing technologies, and various laws/standards of different countries. In response to these requirements, software development organizations are interested in product line engineering and searching for support tools. However, most of the existing tools for supporting product line engineering focus only on providing mechanisms for instantiating products without adequately supporting development of software assets that are adaptable and reusable. To address this problem, we provide a CASE tool, called VULCAN, that provides architecture models/patterns that are adaptable/reusable and also supports mechanisms for instantiating products from assets. We have applied VULCAN to various product lines including glucose management systems and elevator control systems, and we could experience that maintainability of the assets has improved substantially because a large portion of the assets are specifications rather than low-level code and product-specific code is generated from the specifications.