Authors:
Nasser Mustafa
and
Yvan Labiche
Affiliation:
Carleton University, Canada
Keyword(s):
Heterogeneous, Traceability, Generic, Characterization, Traceability Requirements.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Domain-Specific Modeling and Domain-Specific Languages
;
Languages, Tools and Architectures
;
Methodologies, Processes and Platforms
;
Model-Driven Software Development
;
Software Engineering
;
Systems Engineering
Abstract:
Capturing traceability information among artifacts allows for assuring product quality in many ways such as
tracking functional and non-functional requirements, performing system validation and impact analysis.
Although literature provides many techniques to model traceability, existing solutions are either tailored to
specific domains (e.g., Ecore modeling languages), or not complete enough (e.g., lack support to specify
traceability link semantics). This paper examines the current traceability models and identifies the
drawbacks that prevent from capturing some traceability information of heterogeneous artifacts. In this
context, heterogeneous artifacts refer to artifacts that come from widely different modelling notations (e.g.,
UML, Simulink, natural language text, source code). Additionally, the paper proposes traceability model
requirements that are necessary to build a generic traceability model. We argue that the proposed
requirements are sufficient to build a traceability mo
del oblivious of the heterogeneity of the models which
elements need to be traced. We also argue that our proposed requirements can be adopted to create a generic
traceability model that provides flexibility and can accommodate new ways of characterizing and imposing
constraints on trace links or systems artifacts. The proposed requirements incorporate the ideas from many
existing solutions in literature, in an attempt to be as complete as possible.
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