Mumbai University > Computer Engineering > Sem 7 > Software Architecture.

Marks: 5M

Year: Dec14, Dec13, May13

Product-line architecture captures the architectures of many related products simultaneously. It employs explicit variation points in the architecture indicating where design decisions may diverge from product to product. Product-line architectures give stakeholders tools with which ordinary product architecture can be diversified into an artifact suitable for describing related products i.e. a product line.

It is a technique that has the potential to reduce cost significantly and increase software qualities. The power of product lines comes through reuse of-

• Engineering knowledge
• Existing product architectures, styles and patterns
• Pre-existing software components and connectors

There exist two notions of product lines:

1. Business product lines: It is a set of products tied together to achieve a business purpose. These products do not necessarily have any similarity from an engineering perspective.
2. Engineering product lines: Here, the products are tied together by similarities in how they are designed or constructed.

Consider the following representation

The A shape represents the designs belonging to product A. The B shaped figure represents design decisions belonging to product B. The region denoted by ‘c’ shows the common designs of product A and product B.

This common design can be used to build a product-line architecture which can be used by both the products.

This image shows how product-line lowers the development cost and time for making a new product.