A container-based approach to object-oriented product lines

Jason Hallstrom, Nigamath Sridhar, Paul Sivilotti, Anish Arora, and William Leal

Software product lines improve the productivity of developers by structuring application development around a set of features common to a family of applications. While a number of product line development approaches have been proposed, we argue that these approaches primarily target product lines that vary with respect to their functional properties. We propose a complementary approach to developing object oriented product lines that vary with respect to their non-functional characteristics. Our approach is based on the use of software containers, similar to those used to host Enterprise Java Beans. We illustrate the approach in the context of a distributed middleware product line for Microsoft’s .NET Framework. The individual products in this family vary with respect to their dependability properties.

[pdf] [bibtex entry]