Three strategies to specify multi-instantiation in product lines

Product line engineering uses product line models to define the valid combinations of elements in a product and to configure them. Several modeling languages have been proposed to represent product line models. These languages have limits and they do not always fit the requirements of the context. For instance, in the industrial context, product lines contain often multi-instantiated features which are more difficult to model. This paper reports lessons learned during a project with an electronic supplier company called Rexel. Our objective in this study was to find out the appropriate modeling languages to model multi-instantiation, as required the Rexel's Electric Board that contains many multi-instantiated features. This paper presents (i) how three categories of modeling languages have been used in industry to model the multi-instantiation concept of an electric board; (ii) the limits and difficulties encountered with each category of modeling languages; and (iii) modeling strategies to handle multi-instantiation with each kind of language.