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Product line engineering (PLE) is a product development method that esta= blishes a procedure for developing a family of similar products. The entire= family is called a product line, while a concrete product in that family i= s called a product variant.
The usual approach for developing such a family is to develop one produc= t and then copy and modify the design documents for all subsequent products= (the so-called clone-and-own approach). But this approach is rife with pro= blems - it is difficult to make changes common to all products across the b= oard. Also, traceability is greatly impaired - it is hard to do impact anal= ysis.
By contrast, the PLE approach prescribes that a user makes a common desi= gn that encompasses the entire variability spectrum of the products. This d= esign is called a superset model (aka a 150% model) of the system. The avai= lable feature choices are then described (usually in a separate document/to= ol than the system design documents), and a connection is established betwe= en the feature choices and particular points in the design that need to var= y depending on the feature choice (these points are called variation points= ). A particular product of the family is then defined by making specific fe= ature choices. A design for a particular product (aka 100% model) can then = be produced by taking the design documents of the family and narrowing it d= own according to the feature choices of that product. This procedure is usu= ally performed with a PLE tool. The important thing to note here is that de= sign documentation consists of various kinds of documents (assets) - requir= ements, system models, code, test cases, documentation and so on. The PLE t= ool must be able to operate on every kind of the asset to produce consisten= t design documents of the product. This usually requires that the PLE tool = integrates with all the tools in the tool stack used to design the system.&= nbsp;
We present the Product Line Engineering plugin, allowing you to generate= a particular model variant from the whole superset model. In the documenta= tion, you can find descriptions as follows: