Automated reasoning for derivation of products in MD-SPLE

This article presents a strategy that aims to support model-oriented software product line architects on making the decisions required to derive products. Together with the strategy, we present a tool that uses the power of constraint programming to create and use decision models. The models make it possible to relate model transformation rules and product line variants (alternatives) in order to enable the selection of the necessary rules according to the variants selected by a product designer. The greatest innovation of our contribution is that we provide architects with a tool that takes into account the possible interactions between variants of a product line and makes it possible to model the decisions required to derive products reusing existing model transformation rules as much as possible. © 2011 IEEE.