Supporting Web applications development with a product line architecture

Web applications have become crucial elements of the global information infrastructure, evolving from simple collections of static pages to distributed applications. Since Web applications often share similar behaviors, shifting the focus from the design of single applications to that of system families is an effective way to pursue synergy effects in software development. The paper illustrates Koriandol, a product line architecture designed to develop, deploy and maintain families of Web applications. Specific family members are assembled from reusable components which support variability determination through built-in reflective mechanisms. These provide the ability to bind variation points to specific variants even post deployment, making applications widely reconfigurable.