An XVCL-based Approach to Software Product Line Development

In recent years, software product line approach has emerged as a promising way to improve software productivity and quality. How to effectively handle variants (including functional variants, variant design decisions, implementation-level variants) has been a major challenge in product line development. We apply XVCL (XMLbased Variant Configuration Language), a variability mechanism based on frame technology [1], to product line development. In XVCL, x-frames represent domain knowledge in the forms of product line assets. Specific systems, members of a product line, can be constructed by reusing the x-frames. In this paper, we describe an XVCLbased approach to software product line development, using examples from our product line project on Computer Aided Dispatch domain.