Context Service-Orientation -SO- is a rapidly emerging paradigm for the design and development of adaptive and dynamic software systems. Software Product Line Engineering -SPLE- has also gained attention as a promising and successful software reuse development paradigm over the last decade and proven to provide effective solutions to deal with managing the growing complexity of software systems. Objective This study aims at characterizing and identifying the existing research on employing and leveraging SO and SPLE. Method We conducted a systematic mapping study to identify and analyze related literature. We identified 81 primary studies, dated from 2000–2011 and classified them with respect to research focus, types of research and contribution. Result The mapping synthesizes the available evidence about combining the synergy points and integration of SO and SPLE. The analysis shows that the majority of studies focus on service variability modeling and adaptive systems by employing SPLE principles and approaches. In particular, SPLE approaches, especially feature-oriented approaches for variability modeling, have been applied to the design and development of service-oriented systems. While SO is employed in software product line contexts for the realization of product lines to reconcile the flexibility, scalability and dynamism in product derivations thereby creating dynamic software product lines. Conclusion Our study summarizes and characterizes the SO and SPLE topics researchers have investigated over the past decade and identifies promising research directions as due to the synergy generated by integrating methods and techniques from these two areas.

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