Study On Product-line Architecture For ATC Simulated Training Systems

With the architecture as its core, software product line is an engineering approach of systematically using large-grain size reuse technology to develop software products of the same family. Software product line can improve the quality and productivity of software, shorten time to market, reduce the total cost, so it is suitable for professional software development organizations. At present, software product line practice has already achieved a great success, and now its theoretical research is in a period of rapid development. In a specific domain, the common software architecture across all members of the product family is the key to gain large-grain size software reuse. As the skeleton and key asset, product-line architecture is the core of reuse shared among all products in the product line, and it is the foundation of the specific product architecture in product line. Therefore, product-line architecture is the base of product line development. In this paper, through the study on software product-line architecture and its relevant theories, we proposed the product line for the software products in ATC simulated training domain. Especially, the analysis, design and implementation of the reusable product-line architecture and some core components were described. Then the practice of developing a product by reusing the key assets of the product line was also introduced. As a result, a large-grain size software reuse method was explored, and it was suitable for professional software development organizations in a specific domain with the architecture as its core. This paper consists of mainly the following four sections: In the first section, according to the description of its development, software product line was proposed to develop the product family of ATC simulated training based on the current situation and background. In the second section, on the basis of introduction to the software architecture, visually modeling software architecture with UML was discussed, which can improve the understanding and usage of the software architecture. Through the study on architecture-based reuse of DSSA, software product line and its architecture, the framework-based approach was discussed to construct the product-line architecture. In the third section, the product line scope, domain models and common characteristics of the ATC simulated training product family were described through the domain analysis. On the basis above, the design and implementation of product-line architecture were described, including the division of functions, architecture style, sub-systems' architecture and some key reusable components. In the fourth section, the product development practice of tower control visual simulator based on product-line architecture was described with the discussion of the development model and organization structure.