Generation and validation of traces between requirements and architecture based on formal trace semantics

Abstract

Please cite this article in press as: Goknil, A., et al., Generation and validation of traces between requirements and architecture based on formal trace semantics. J. Syst. Software (2013) The size and complexity of software systems make integration of the new/modified requirements to the software system costly and time consuming. The impact of requirements changes on other requirements, design elements and source code should be traced to determine parts of the software to be changed. Considerable research has been devoted to relating requirements and design artifacts with source code. Less attention has been paid to relating requirements (R) with architecture (A) by using well-defined semantics of traces. Traces between R&A might be manually assigned. This is time-consuming, and error prone. Traces might be incomplete and invalid. In this paper, we present an approach for automatic trace generation and validation of traces between requirements (R) and architecture (A). Requirements relations and architecture verification techniques are used. A trace metamodel is defined with commonly used trace types between R&A. We use the semantics of traces and requirements relations for generating and validating traces with a tool support. The tool provides the following: (1) generation and validation of traces by using requirements relations and/or verification of architecture, (2) generation and validation of requirements relations by using traces. The tool is based on model transformation in ATL and termrewriting logic in Maude.

Providing tool support for specifying safety-critical systems by enforcing syntactic contract conditions

“…In contrast to [23,27,44,50,51], but in accordance with the present paper, the works [2,3,28,29] describe formally founded support for RE. Similar to the present paper, the works [3,28] both focus on establishing trace links between requirements and design/architecture.…”

“…Similar to the present paper, the works [3,28] both focus on establishing trace links between requirements and design/architecture. However, while the approach in the present paper is applicable for any type design flow, i.e., top-down, bottom-up, or anything in between, the approach in [3] requires using model transformations for driving development and is therefore only applicable for a top-down design flow.…”

“…However, while the approach in the present paper is applicable for any type design flow, i.e., top-down, bottom-up, or anything in between, the approach in [3] requires using model transformations for driving development and is therefore only applicable for a top-down design flow. In contrast to the present paper, but similar to the previously mentioned contract-based approaches [13,14,16], the support in [3,28] relies on formal representations of architectures and requirements. The work in [2] describes a formal modelbased development methodology using requirements refinement.…”

Change impact analysis for requirements: A metamodeling approach

“…By providing change alternatives with impact prediction we determine some of the false positive impacts that usually occur in the industrial tools. Once the requirements engineer analyzes the impact of a change in the requirements model with our approach, by using traces between requirements and architecture [35,37] the requirements engineer/the software architect can identify the impact of this change in the software architecture.…”

Change Impact Analysis for Evolving Configuration Decisions in Product Line Use Case Models

“…Goknil et al (2014bGoknil et al ( , 2008a and ten Hove et al (2009) propose a change impact analysis approach which propagates changes in natural language requirements to other requirements by using the formal semantics of requirements relations, e.g., 'requires', 'refines' and 'conflicts' ( Goknil et al, 2011( Goknil et al, , 2008b( Goknil et al, , 2013. These requirements relations are used together with trace links between requirements and architecture models to identify the impact of requirements changes on architecture models ( Goknil et al, 2014a. When requirements are expressed in models such as goal models, more specialized dependency types can be used for impact analysis.…”