About us

XVCL team includes faculty and students in the Software Engineering Lab, School of Computing, NUS and collaborators. We started experimenting with frame technology from Netron, Inc., Toronto in 1997, applying frames to Product Line architectures for component-based systems written in Java. Since 1999, Paul Bassett, co-founder of Netron and inventor of frames, has been closely working with us. Application of frames became a leading theme of our joint Singapore-Ontario project funded by the Singapore National Science and Technology Board and Canadian Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology. Our partners for this project included Singapore Engineering Software, Pte. Ltd., Netron, Inc., Toronto and University of Waterloo. XVCL emerged from this project and is the result of collaborative effort.

We have a number of on-going projects in which we apply XVCL to manage variants in Product Lines architecture, code and also to UML models. We collaborate with Awais Rashid of University of Lancaster on comparing XVCL with Aspect-Oriented Programming approach.

XVCL is based on simple yet powerful principles. We believe XVCL can provide a uniform and effective solution to problems of configuring variants in a wide range of software and non-software domains.

Our goal is to develop XVCL methods, refine the XVCL based on feedback and build tools that will help users develop and evolve XVCL solutions. These goals can only be achieved via extensive experimentation with XVCL in a wide range of software and non-software domains. Comparative studies of various approaches to Product Lines are also very important to us.

We would like to hear from you about the application domains you try to tackle with XVCL and work with you on specific problems. Contact us whenever you get stuck on problems and tell us about your successes and experience.