Feature-Based Product Derivation : Composing Features

Anton Jansen, Rein Smedinga, Jilles van Gurp, Jan Bosch Department of Mathematics and Computing Science University of Groningen PO Box 800, 9700 AV The Netherlands [anton|rein|jilles|jan.bosch]@cs.rug.nl http://segroup.cs.rug.nl Abstract We have observed that large software systems are increasingly defined in terms of the features they implement. Consequently, there is a need to express the commonalities and variability between products of a product family in terms of features. Unfortunately, technology support for the early aspect of a feature is currently limited to the requirements level. There is a need to extend this support to the design and implementation level as well. Existing separation of concerns technologies, such as AOP and SOP, may be of use here. However, features are not first class citizens in these paradigms. To address this and to explore the problems and issues with respect to features and feature composition, we have formalized the notion of features in a feature model. The feature model relates features to a component role model. Using our model and a composition algorithm, we can select a number of base components and a number of features from a software product family and derive a product. As a proof of concept we have experimented extensively with a prototype Java implementation of our approach.

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