Survey of Traceability Approaches in Model-Driven Engineering

Abstract

Models have been used in various engineering fields to help managing complexity and represent information in different abstraction levels, according to specific notations and stakeholder's viewpoints. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) gives the basic principles for the use of models as primary artefacts throughout the software development phases and presents characteristics that simplify the engineering of software in various domains, such as Enterprise Computing Systems. Hence, for its successful application, MDE processes must consider traceability practices. They help the understanding, capturing, tracking and verification of software artefacts and their relationships and dependencies with other artefacts during the software life-cycle. In this survey, we discuss the state-of-the-art in traceability approaches in MDE and assess them with respect to five general comparison criteria: representation, mapping, scalability, change impact analysis and tool support. As a complementary result, we have identified some open issues that can be better explored by traceability in MDE.

A Transformation-Driven Approach to Automate Feedback Verification Results

“…Several traceability approaches are proposed in the literature [9]. For example, in [10], authors introduce an approach named embedded traceability.…”

A model-driven traceability framework for software product lines

“…As previously noted, a traceability tool for SPL needs to be configured with artefacts and link kinds associated to the software process, and as explained in [1], MDE seems a good technology to achieve this. Galvao and Goknil [20] present a survey of traceability tools and approaches in MDE. The authors emphasize the importance of tool support to automate traceability in MDE and discuss several deficiencies in this context.…”

An Overview of Traceability: Towards a general multi-domain model

“…For more details about MDE techniques, Galvão and A. Goknil have listed many traceability approaches in MDE and evaluated them using five comparison criteria: representation, mapping, scalability, change impact analysis and tool support [3]. They classified these approaches into three categories: requirementsdriven approaches, modeling approaches and transformation approaches.…”

“…A model is a symbolic system expressed in a language and each kind of model is represented by an appropriate modeling language and can be applied to certain purposes [3].…”

“…In software development also, this practice helps in the understanding, capturing, tracking and verification of software artifacts and their relationships and their dependencies during a software life-cycle [3]. As in [4], traceability was initially used to trace requirements from their source to implementation and test, when we talk about software development and now, it plays an increasing role in defect management, change management and project management.…”