This paper proposes a methodology for software factory design guided by DSMLs (Domain Specific Modeling Languages) in the context of the SPL (Software Product Line) area. In order to guide the engineer in the design of the generative process, we propose a transformation allowing to transform the annotated metamodel of a DSML into an Feature Model that can be used later as a decision tree to help the engineer in the choice of the best implementation tactics for the variants. The article presents and illustrates the transformation based on an industrial example.

Software Product Line (SPL) field is meant to engineer families of related products to reduce development cost. Leveraging feature models for capturing variable and common aspects inside of a product family omits crucial concepts that need to be considered through designing system domain perimeter. At this level, Model Driven Engineering was integrated in SPL to facilitate variability implementation and management. MDE techniques rely on the DSML meta-model that describes the main concepts of the domain and their relations which allow system designers to work closer to the system domain as they can manipulate real concepts.The current work proposes a Methodology for Software Factories that aggregates both of the two aforementioned techniques to cover a large number of code generation strategies to derive products branching from a domain portfolio. The first phase consists in configuring a possible product line by transforming the domain metamodel DSML into a generic feature diagram. Secondly, the client uses the DSML to configure, by the guidances of the founded product line, the desired product. Hence, the Methodolgy Software Factory provides the engineer guidelines to derive the target product according to the configured product line.In this work in progress paper, we propose to extend metametamodel inspired from MOF in order to integrate crucial FD semantics element into the DSML metamodel and by the way facilitate their conversion. Besides, in this regard, a transformation method is presented to handle the extended DSML metamodel.

Software Product Line has acquired a significant momentum at the end of the 1990ies since it allows the production of variable software systems corresponding to the same domain portfolio. The effectiveness of the derivation process depends on how well variability is defined and implemented which is a crucial topic area that was addressed among two essential trends: On the one hand, starting from Domain Specific Modelling Language to express domain requirements and automate the code generation with Model-Driven Engineering techniques and on the second hand, exploiting the soar of variability mechanisms.