ARText - Variant Handling Features
The support for variant handling is one of the important new features
introduced in AUTOSAR 4.0. The ARText variant handling features provide an
easy way to specify variants and variation points. These will be available
with the release of Artop 3.0.
Highlights
Variant Specification
The ARText language allows the textual specification of system constants,
value sets and predefined variants. These are the basic building blocks for
specifying variants in AUTOSAR.
Variation Point Editing
The variation point view can be used to edit binding constraints and binding
times of variation points. Binding constraints are defined by AUTOSAR
formulas that can be directly added in the variation point view Formulas are
specified in a human-readable way directly within the form. On save, the
formula will be converted to its equivalent AUTOSAR XML. This exhibits that
ARText languages support projectional editing, namely that they can work
directly on AUTOSAR XML instead of being stored in a separate file.
Variant Evaluation
Variant evaluation is the process of transforming a variant-enriched AUTOSAR
model into a variant specific one. The evaluation is performed by evaluating
binding constraints based on a given variant. Using the ARText-based
implementation of the AUTOSAR formula language, this is already supported in
Artop, for example, the AUTOSAR browser can filter AUTOSAR elements based on
a given variant.