Multi-level customization in application engineering

The goal of software product lines (SPLs) is to improve productivity,
time to market, and the quality of application development by
leveraging the commonalities of systems within an application domain
while managing their variations. These commonalities and variations
may be packaged into a domain-specific platform (DSP), which supports
application development through configuration settings or code
extensions. Examples of large, vendor-provided DSPs are IBM’s
WebSphere Commerce for e-commerce applications and SAP’s R/3 for
enterprise resource management systems. The main advantage of creating
a DSP is that its planned variability allows for a common product line
architecture while its domain focus allows for components that are
functionality-rich.