Software product line (SPL) engineering suggests development and reuse of core software artifacts for a particular domain as its main principle. This fosters productivity and quality of developing customized software products by exploiting their commonalities and variabilities. However, domain variabilities often crosscut the architecture and are therefore orthogonal to individual software artifacts that make up a system. Designing a SPL architecture that realizes domain commonalities and variabilities is a large research challenge requiring all kinds of software engineering tools, methodologies, and techniques. Evolving from the logistics domain, this book presents a general, model-based SPL architecture for Enterprise Applications. A framework for a multi-layered architecture as reference architecture for such systems is presented to support model-based development of reusable core artifacts. In addition to standard SPL requirements, the framework supports new concepts and methodologies for platform and technology independent artifact design, automation of product development, and mechanisms for product end-customization to satisfy customer specific needs.

Gernot Schmölzer, Ph.D. in Informatics and Electrical Engineering from Graz University of Technology. Software architect; Research associate at the Department of Computer and System Sciences, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden. Research interests: computer security, software technology, model-driven development and SPL engineering.