Abstract:
This chapter presents hierarchical variability as an important development notion especially when considered
together with a systems specification through decomposition. A matured domain-specific environment is the
precondition for variability-centric engineering for compositional approaches as targeted in this study: Most of
the requirements have been already modeled, and most of the problem domain elements have corresponding
reusable solutions. Also, a mature domain enjoys a wide community of developers who are familiar with those
problems and solution-space elements and an effective set of specific tools. Decomposition is a fundamental
mechanism in many approaches for the specification of various dimensions of modeling. Decomposition of
especially structure modeling for software is not new. Here, variability guidance is incorporated into both
structure and process decomposition. This chapter combines such notions in the demonstration of variabilitycentric development suggesting a structural and procedural decomposition of the system. The predecessors,
component-oriented approaches rely on the structural decomposition whereas service-oriented development is
being supported by process decomposition. A vending machine case study is presented in this chapter for
demonstrating the propagation of variability specification along with the enhancements of the componentoriented model and the process model.
