
% $Id: conclusions.tex,v 1.1 2005/01/14 06:03:18 gokhale Exp $
\section{Concluding Remarks}
\label{sec:conclusions}
This paper describes how contemporary middleware have addressed a
number of sources of variability in DRE systems. However, in order to
support a number of product line architectures, middleware have become
extremely flexible providing numerous configuration and customization
(C\&C) options. These C\&C options tend to get tangled and crosscut
different layers of the middleware and lifecycle stages of the DRE
systems.

In this paper we propose a three dimensional model to partition the
middleware C\&C space. Using this partitioned space we then describe a
tool-based approach that provides a mechanism to make the right
choices of C\&C options to be used for a specific product-line
architecture.

Our prior work has involved developing a model-driven
generative programing tool chain called CoSMIC~\cite{Schmidt:04a},
which is a collection of domain-specific modeling languages and
generative tools to address the deployment and configuration
challenges of DRE systems. Our goal is to extend CoSMIC to provide the
capabilities described in this paper.
