A Design Approach for Service-Oriented Product Lines

Software reuse is a key factor for enterprises interested in productivity gains and software quality. In this context, Software Product Line (SPL) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) are two reuse strategies that are getting a lot of attention in research and practice lately. SPL and SOA share some goals and characteristics, which motivate the use of both together with the purpose of increasing reuse rates. However, this combination needs a well-defined development process. Without this process, the development team may develop software in an ad-hoc manner with success relying on the effort of a few individual members, what may increase the risks of failure, development costs and time-to-market. In this sense, this book presents an approach to design service-oriented product line architectures with a well-defined sequence of activities and sub-activities with clearly defined inputs and outputs, and performed by a predefined set of roles with specific responsibilities.