Database Evolution for Software Product Lines

Software product lines (SPLs) allow creating a multitude of individual but similar products based on one common software model. Software components can be developed independently and new products can be generated easily. Inevitably, software evolves, a new version has to be deployed, and the data already existing in the database has to be transformed accordingly. As independently developed components are compiled into an individual SPL product, the local evolution script of every involved component has to be weaved into a single global database evolution script for the product. In this paper, we report on the database evolution toolkit DAVE in the context of an industry project. DAVE solves the weaving problem and provides a feasible solution for database evolution in SPLs.