Pure Variants

Control the existence of requirements, test cases, model elements, code blocks, etc., across variants.

Features of a Pure Variants feature model can be mapped to engineering assets like requirements, test cases, architecture elements, files, and code blocks in the solution space to create a structural variation point.

This mapping is achieved by adding a restriction—a rule consisting of feature names and logical operators—to those engineering assets that should not be present in all variants.

When a variant is configured by selecting features from the feature model, this selection is used to evaluate the restrictions of the engineering assets. Each restriction will either evaluate to true or false, and the respective engineering assets will be kept or removed accordingly from the variant-specific output.

Thus, structural variability can be expressed in all engineering assets and resolved by Pure Variants to generate variant-specific output.

Control values inside requirements text, test descriptions, model attributes, code, etc., across variants.

Attributes of a Pure Variants feature model can be referenced in engineering assets like requirements, test cases, architecture elements, files, and code blocks to create a parametric variation point.

This is achieved by adding a calculation—a rule consisting of references to one or multiple attributes of the feature model and mathematical operators—to those engineering assets that should contain different values across variants.

The value of an attribute is determined during variant configuration, either set manually by the user or auto-determined based on logical rules or calculations using other attributes as input.

Each calculation in any engineering asset will be resolved and replaced by the calculated values.

Thus, parametric variability can be expressed in all engineering assets and resolved by Pure Variants to generate variant-specific output.

Experience consistent reuse of engineering assets across tool borders thanks to our portfolio of Pure Variants connectors.

Pure Variants provides variant management across tool and asset type borders. Features of a product line and their dependencies are captured in feature models. These features are then mapped to requirements, test cases, architecture, code, and other engineering assets to control structural and parametric variability consistently across all of those assets.

By deciding about features and attribute values only once for each variant based on feature models and by resolving variation points in the engineering assets fully automated, inconsistencies can be avoided, and incompatibilities of decisions can be detected and treated early on in the development lifecycle.

Express and communicate variability information across different domains like mechanical, electrical, and software engineering.

Pure Variants relies on feature modelling to formalize variability knowledge and to make it persistent. In the development of complex systems, engineers from different domains, like mechanical, electrical, and software engineering, are contributing to the development of product variants.

With feature models they have an easy-to-understand, domain-independent format to exchange variability information and to discuss known dependencies early on in the development process to ensure consistency of their contributions and avoid surprises at integration time.

Enhance traceability between features in Pure Variants and other engineering assets in OSLC-enabled tools by establishing OSLC links.

Pure Variants acts as an OSLC provider, allowing users to create OSLC links between their engineering assets and feature model features. This improves traceability and makes these links navigable across tools.

Pure Variants also supports the OSLC concept of global configurations for engineering data management across tool borders. Integrate your Pure Variants projects into a Global Configuration that includes your engineering assets and create global baselines. Let Pure Variants generate global configurations for a variant from a global configuration containing your reusable engineering assets.

Whether you prefer a file-based development workflow and want to commit your Pure Variants models to a version control repository, or you prefer a real-time collaboration workflow for your feature models and variant models, Pure Variants is ready for both.

The Pure Variants Eclipse client supports any version control system that is compatible to Eclipse via the Eclipse Team Provider interface. Alternatively, a Pure Variants model server can be used to store feature models and variant models in a database and collaborate on them in real time.

In both cases, a model-based compare and merge view is available to track changes over time, and to compare different variants to each other.

Configure your variants and derive variant-specific engineering assets in multiple steps.

Instead of generating variant-specific engineering assets from a superset based on a feature selection in one go, you can also add in-between steps. This way, you can for example generate a customer-specific subproduct line with a reduced feature model and a reduced set of engineering assets out of which you can derive the customer variants in a subsequent step.

Use hierarchical variability concepts to manage variability across system and components borders.

Sometimes a system is too complex to configure it in one go. In this case, it might consist of multiple components or subsystems that have their own development lifecycle. Pure Variants comes with hierarchical variability concepts to model variability of subsystems in their own feature models yet establishes relations between the features of multiple subsystems and system-level features to ensure consistency across the whole system. Configure your system variants bottom-up, top-down, or inside-out with full variant management support.

Include Pure Variants in your CI/CD workflow and automate the generation of variant-specific engineering assets.

Pure Variants comes with prepared jobs that can be triggered via build script to automate as much of the product line engineering processes involving Pure Variants as possible. Automatically trigger the generation of variant-specific assets, imports, and other Pure Variants-related tasks and run them in headless mode. Make variant management data part of your DevOps process.

Continue the development of product line assets and variant-specific assets in parallel.

You want to gain the advantages of product line engineering with Pure Variants, but keep the flexibility to develop new functionalities in the context of a single variant? Thanks to the strong integration of Pure Variants to configuration management, both can be achieved in combination.

Generate variant-specific engineering assets from a superset of reusable assets, continue the development on both levels, and let Pure Variants help you to update variant-specific assets without losing local changes.