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Summary: Vol. 8, No. 5, JulyAugust 2009
An Overview of Feature-Oriented Software
Development
Sven Apel, Department of Informatics and Mathematics, University of Passau,
Germany
Christian K¨astner, School of Computer Science, University of Magdeburg,
Germany
Feature-oriented software development (FOSD) is a paradigm for the construction,
customization, and synthesis of large-scale software systems. In this survey, we give
an overview and a personal perspective on the roots of FOSD, connections to other
software development paradigms, and recent developments in this field. Our aim is to
point to connections between different lines of research and to identify open issues.
1 INTRODUCTION
Feature-oriented software development (FOSD) is a paradigm for the construction,
customization, and synthesis of large-scale software systems. The concept of a fea-
ture is at the heart of FOSD. A feature is a unit of functionality of a software system
that satisfies a requirement, represents a design decision, and provides a potential
configuration option. The basic idea of FOSD is to decompose a software system
in terms of the features it provides. The goal of the decomposition is to construct
well-structured software that can be tailored to the needs of the user and the appli-
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