Architecting A Model-Driven Aspect-Oriented Product Line For A Digital Tv Middleware: A Refactoring Experience

In this paper, we present the experience of refactoring the architecture of Ginga, the Brazilian Terrestrial Digital TV System (SBTVD) middleware. The main goal of the Ginga refactoring was to increase its configurability, through the automatic management of its variabilities. The resultant middleware, named GingaForAll, is based on a software product line (SPL) architecture, which encompasses both the middleware commonalities and its specific functionalities. Aspect-oriented techniques were used to improve the modularization of crosscutting mandatory and variable features from the Ginga SPL architecture. A model-driven based process was developed to allow the automatic management of the common and variable features in a high abstraction level that supports the management of code assets in terms of configurable models. The integration of such software engineering techniques have contributed to provide a flexible and configurable Ginga architecture, which allows the automatic generation of middleware customizations driven by the devices constraints and applications needs.