Applying Aspect-Orientation Techniques in Automotive Software Product-Line Engineering

The application of product-line engineering concepts to automotive software development has received increasing attention during the last few years. A core facet of software product-line approaches is the definition and management of variability within various development artifacts. Aspect-orientation techniques provide an interesting alternative to the traditional way of defining variability with variation points and variants. In this paper we (1) show where and how aspectorientation can be embedded in an automotive product-line approach, (2) compare the traditional technique for variability definition with the aspectoriented one and finally (3) discuss the benefits as well as possible shortcomings of applying aspectorientation for automotive software product-lines.