Component-based reuse in mission critical Command and Control system domain was a starting point for a long lasting research collaboration between National University of Singapore (NUS) and ST Electronics Pte. Ltd. (STEE). STEE industrial projects as well as NUS lab studies revealed limitations of conventional architecture-centric, component-based reuse in the area of generic design to unify similarity patterns (e.g., similar classes, components or architectural patterns) commonly found in software. Further research showed that meta-level extensions to conventional techniques could strengthen their generic design capabilities, considerably improving effectiveness of reuse solutions, and increasing productivity gains due to reuse. These experiences led to development of "mixed strategy" approach based on synergistic application of meta-level generative programming technique of XVCL, together with conventional programming techniques. In the paper, we describe university-industry collaboration that proved beneficial for both parties: STEE advanced reuse practice via application of XVCL in several software product line projects. Early inputs from STEE helped NUS team validate and refine XVCL reuse methods, and expand into new research directions. We describe a sequence of projects that led to successful application of XVCL in industrial projects. We describe experiences from those projects and their significance for both industrial practice and understanding principles of flexible software, i.e., software that can be easily changed and adapted to various reuse contexts.

Web Applications (WA) are developed and maintained under tight schedules. Much similarity across WAs creates opportunities for cutting development cost and easing evolution via reuse. This tutorial shows a practical way to exploit similarity patterns - at architecture and code levels - to simplify the design of WAs, helping to meet the unique challenges of Web engineering.

Imprecise, frequently changing requirements and short time-to-market create challenges for application of conventional software methods in Web Portal engineering. To address these challenges, ST Electronics (Info-Software Systems) Pte. Ltd. applied a lightweight, reactive approach to support a Web Portal product line. Unique characteristics of the approach were fast, low-cost migration from a single conventional Web Portal towards a reusable "generic Web Portal" solution, effective handling of large number of functional variants and their dependencies, the ability to rapidly develop new Web Portals from the generic one, and to independently evolve multiple Web Portals without ever losing a connection between them and the "generic Web Portal". The initial Web Portal was built using state-of-the-art conventional methods. The Web Portal was not flexible enough to reap the benefits of new business opportunities that required the company to rapidly develop and further maintain many similar Web Portals. To overcome the limitations of the conventional solution, a reuse technique called XVCL was applied incrementally. Over a period of three weeks, the conventional solution was converted into a Web architecture capable of handling nine Web Portals from a base of code smaller than the original Web Portal. In the paper, we describe the process that led to building the above Web Portal product line. We explain the difficulties in building an effective generic Web solution using conventional techniques. We analyze our reuse-based solution in qualitative and quantitative ways.