Generative Programming and Software System Families, Abstract of Invited Talk

Today’s software engineering practices are aimed at developing
single systems. There are attempts to achieve reuse through object-
and component-based technologies with two specific goals: to cut
development costs, and time-to-market and to improve quality. But
current research and practical experience suggest that only moving
from the single system engineering to the system-family engineering
approach can bring significant progress with respect to these goals
[3,6,7].

Generative programming builds on system-family
engineering and puts its focus on maximizing the automation of
application development [1,2,4,5]: given a system specification,
generators use a set of reusable components to generate the concrete
system. Both the means of application specification, the generators,
and the reusable components are developed in a domain-engineering
cycle. This talk introduces the necessary techniques, notations, and
processes using examples. It also outlines our vision of how the
software industry can be transformed in a similar way the traditional
industries moved from manual craftsmanship to automated assembly
lines, and the role generative techniques can play in this
transition.