Customizable Software Architecture – Approaches overview

• All in One and feature toggles
  • Challenges: if much customization is needed
• Branching/Forking of whole product
  • Challenges: merging with main branch in post-delivery
• Entity-Attribute-Value-Model (EAV) for database as addition
• Plugin Architecture
  • Challenges: “Points of Customization” (aka Extension Points) in the main product
• Extension Approach (inheritance)
  • Separation of main product and customer-specific

Evaluation

	All in One	Branching	Plugins	Extension
Architecture Independence	+	+	–	–
Business logic customization	+	+	~	–
UI customization	+	+	~	+
Performance effects	+	+	+	+
Complexity long term	–	–	~	~
Scalability	–	–	+	+

References

• https://www.cuba-platform.com/blog/how-to-develop-a-highly-customizable-product