TY - JOUR
T1 - Generation and validation of traces between requirements and architecture based on formal trace semantics
AU - Goknil, Arda
AU - Kurtev, Ivan
AU - Van Den Berg, Klaas
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - 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 term-rewriting logic in Maude.
AB - 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 term-rewriting logic in Maude.
KW - Requirements metamodel
KW - Software architecture
KW - Trace generation and validation
KW - Trace metamodel
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84891623818&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jss.2013.10.006
DO - 10.1016/j.jss.2013.10.006
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84891623818
SN - 0164-1212
VL - 88
SP - 112
EP - 137
JO - Journal of Systems and Software
JF - Journal of Systems and Software
IS - 1
ER -