According to Siegmund et al., feature-oriented programming (FOP) is an alternate runtime adaptation process that supports software product lines (SPLs).

While SPL concepts have been in the software reuse community for a long time, this paper extends the existing research with new heterogeneous system tailoring concepts for service-oriented architectures (SOAs). In particular, the authors state that FOP is especially suited to heterogeneous crosscuts, where different code fragments need to be replaced at runtime. They provide many examples, such as dynamically replacing various interoperability product line features. Their approach shows runtime swapping between various protocols, such as the transmission control protocol (TCP) and the user datagram protocol (UDP), based on changes in hardware and operating systems.

Siegmund et al. boldly claim that other adaptability approaches cannot handle unanticipated program changes, which are accomplished through their alternate FOP techniques. Although other research is cited to back up this claim, the paper lacks significant contrasts to mainstream object-oriented and aspect-oriented development approaches, especially since FOP is not yet well known.

In summary, this paper will help readers compare various industry and research approaches, in order to improve tools to support the overall SPL vision.