Common Metamodel of Component Diagram and Feature Diagram in Generative Programming

Component-based software engineering and generative programming are common approaches in software engineering. Each approach has some benefits and domain of usage. Component-based development is used to build autonomous components that can be further combined in different ways, while generative programming is more suitable when building systems that have different variants. Before a variable component based system can be build, it needs to be modeled. In this article, a new common metamodel that aims to enable modeling a system which combines both component-based development and generative programming is introduced. The introduced metamodel proposed in this paper combines the component diagram that is used to model systems in component-based development and the feature diagram that is employed in modeling systems in generative programming. The combined metamodel enables modeling of variable systems using components.