Dealing with Variability in Architecture Descriptions to Support Automotive Product Lines

Architectural description languages (ADLs) are essential means for a system and software design in the large. Their common concepts are components, ports, interfaces and connectors. Some of them already support the representation and management of variance, a prerequisite to support product line engineering, but the support of variability often stops on component level. In this paper, a more detailed view on the integration of variability into architectural models is taken. The focus is set on providing support for product line engineering within the automotive E/E1 domain, where functionality and/or its realization is varying according to specific customer needs and hardware topologies. In general, the fundamental question in this domain is not, whether a product line approach should be applied, but what is the best way to integrate it.