Product Instantiation in Software Product Lines: A Case Study

Product instantiation is one of the less frequently studied activities in the domain of software product lines. In this paper, we present the results of a case study at Axis Communication AB on product instantiation in an industrial product line, i.e. five problems and three issues. The problems are concerned the insufficiency of functional commonality, features spanning multiple components, the exclusion of unwanted features, the evolution of product line components and the handling of initialisation code. The issues discuss architectural compliance versus product instantiation effort, quick-fixes versus properly engineered extensions and component instantiation support versus product instantiation effort. The identified problems and issues are based on the case study, but have been generalized to apply to a wider context.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: GCSE
• Authors: Jan Bosch, Mattias Högström
• Keywords: GCSE 2000, Product Instantiation, Product Line, Software Engineering, Versus Product Instantiation