Describing variability in service-oriented software product lines

Abstract

Service-oriented architectures are a standard-based and technology-independent distributed computing paradigm for discovering, binding and assembling loosely-coupled software services. Software product lines on the other hand allow a generic architecture to be configured and deployed in different instances. Product lines facilitate systematic reuse through managing variability. In this paper, we combine ideas from the service domain and the product line domain and investigate what types of variability exist in service-oriented software architectures. Moreover, we suggest a way for representing variability in service-oriented architectures by formalizing the notion of variability. To allow different viewpoints on variability, we define stakeholder roles that occur in the context of service-oriented software architectures. By applying the proposed concepts, we hope to improve variability management at the software architecture level of service-oriented systems.