Consistency-based Merging of Variability Models
  Globally operating enterprises selling large and complex products and
services often have to deal with situations where variability models are
locally developed to take into account the requirements of local markets. For
example, cars sold on the U.S. market are represented by variability models in
some or many aspects different from European ones. In order to support global
variability management processes, variability models and the underlying
knowledge bases often need to be integrated. This is a challenging task since
an integrated knowledge base should not produce results which are different
from those produced by the individual knowledge bases. In this paper, we
introduce an approach to variability model integration that is based on the
concepts of contextual modeling and conflict detection. We present the
underlying concepts and the results of a corresponding performance analysis.
