Automatic Generation of Interoperability Connectors using Software Product Lines Engineering

Information Systems (ISs) of modern companies must be reactive and capable to communicate with third-party IS. It is, therefore, necessary to establish agile interoperability between information systems. For this purpose, connectors are used to ensure interactions between IS components. However, components are independently designed and conform to different technical and domain standards that are continuously evolving. Given that the connectors are often developed manually and are not reusable in most cases, establishing and maintaining interoperability becomes a major challenge. In this paper we propose an approach to automatically generate connectors, using software product line engineering to reuse common features and better manage variability. A metamodel of the connector is proposed to show that they can be considered as first-class entities. An industrial case study followed by a discussion is proposed to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.