Supporting evolution with a configuration language: industrial experience

This paper reports on some practical work undertaken to assess the support for system evolution provided by a formalised configuration language, with supporting analysis and system generation tools. The language and tools are the main result of the PROTEUS1 project. The work described is based on practical application of the PROTEUS results at Stentofon, a Norwegian industrial company producing customized internal communications systems. The paper includes a description of the approach to software development currently used at Stentofon, and highlights why evolution support is an important problem area in their product development. The paper then describes the PROTEUS approach to supporting system evolution, and assesses the extent to which this has been successful in its practical application to product development at Stentofon. The paper concludes with a summary of the lessons learned from this work.