Defining, Analyzing, Querying and Assuring Product Line Models.

Throughout its development and maintenance cycle, software is subject to many activities including design, analysis, evolution, testing, safety certification, querying, debugging, repair. Since industry commonly adopts software product lines to manage the development of complex families of software systems, there is a clear need to support all of these activities for product lines. In this talk, I will describe a number of approaches based on "lifting" – a reinterpretation of the meaning of product-level activities for the entire product line. I will also describe design decisions for the underlying tool support and results of applying these tools in the automotive domain.