Supporting the Product Derivation Process with a Knowledge-based Approach

In this paper, a product derivation process is described, which is based on specifying customer requirements, features and artifacts in a knowledge base. In such a knowledge base a model about all kinds of variability of a software-intensive systems is represented by using a logicbased representation language. Having such a language, a machinery which interprets the model is defined and actively supports the product derivation process e.g. by handling dependencies between features, customer requirements, and artifacts. Because the adaptation and new development of artifacts is a basic task during the derivation process where a product for a specific customer is developed, this evolution task is integrated in the proposed knowledgebased derivation process.