An Ontology-based Approach to Model-Driven Software Product Lines

Software development in highly variable domains constrained by tight regulations and with many business concepts involved results in hard to deliver and maintain applications, due to the complexity of dealing with the large number of concepts provided by the different parties and system involved in the process. One way to tackle these problems is thru combining software product lines and model-driven software development supported by ontologies. Software product lines and model-driven approaches would promote reuse on the software artifacts and, if supported by an ontological layer, those artifacts would be domain-validated. We intend to create a new conceptual framework for software development with domain validated models in highly variable domains. To define such a framework we will propose a model that relates several dimensions and areas of software development thru time and abstraction levels. This model would guarantee to the software house traceability of components, domain validated artifacts, easy to maintain and reusable components, due to the relations and mappings we propose to establish in the conceptual framework, between the software artifacts and the ontology.