1. Deutscher Software-Produktlinien Workshop, DSPL-1. Proceedings

In the context of software product-lines the configuration knowledge describing how requirements are mapped onto elements of the reuse framework is essential for the success of the product-line. The starting point of this mapping process can be a feature model which describes the functionality to be found in the domain on an abstract level. In this paper we present an approach for the description of feature models which offers a tool-supported selection of features and a connection of this information to the further steps of application development. ment a single feature. With this knowledge in mind it is possible to trace decisions on the level of the feature model down to relevant components of the architecture. In contrast, it is also possible to exclude parts of the architecture based on the decision not to include certain features. This paper describes an approach for the formalization of feature models which is based on the design space technique. This technique is well suited for the tool supported selection of features as well as the deployment of the feature selection in further steps of the development process. The paper is structured as follows. The next section gives a short overview of feature modeling as it is currently seen in the research community. Section 3 contains a description of the design space technique whose deployment for feature modeling in the context of our software development process is explained in section 4. In section 5, short usage scenarios are given which describe the further application of the feature selection during the configuration of the product-line. Finally, section 6 gives some concluding remarks and an outlook on further work.