Visualizing Traceability Information with iTrace (original) (raw)
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D3TraceView: A Traceability Visualization Tool
Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 2017
Software traceability is the ability to relate artefacts created during the life cycle of software development. Traceability is fundamental to support several activities of the software development process such as impact analysis, software maintenance and evolution, verification and validation. Despite the importance and advances in the software traceability area, traceability practice is still a challenge. One of these challenges is concerned with the visualization of traceability information. In this paper, we present D3TraceView, a traceability visualization tool that allows displaying traceability information in different formats depending on the purpose of use of traceability information. The tool supports different types of queries related to the use of traceability information. We use an Air Traffic Control Environment multi-agent system to demonstrate the use of the tool.
Visualization of Traceability Models with Domain-speciļ¬c Layouting
2011
Traceability models are often used to describe the correspondence between source and target models of model transformations. Although the visual representation of such models are important for transformation development and application, mostly ad-hoc solutions are present in industrial environments. In this paper we present a user interface component for visualizing traceability models inside transformation frameworks. As generic graph visualization methods fail to emphasize the underlying logical structure of our model, we used domain-specific layouts by customizing generic graph layout algorithms with data from the metamodels used during the transformation. This approach was evaluated, among others, with the traceability models generated by a BPEL verification transformation, which serves as our running example.
Building model-driven engineering traceability classifications
2008
Model-Driven Engineering involves the application of many different model management operations, some automated, some manual. For developers to stay in control of their models and codebase, trace information must be maintained by all model management operations. This leads to a large number of trace links, which themselves need to be managed, queried, and evaluated. Classifications of traceability and trace links are an essential capability required for understanding and managing trace links. We present a process for building traceability classifications for a variety of widely used and accepted operations (both automated and manual) and show the results of applying the process to a rich traceability context.
Towards Automated Traceability Maintenance in Model Driven Engineering
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Traceability relations are used to understand the dependencies between the artifacts created during the development of a software system. In model driven Engineering (MDE), traceability relations may be generated implicitly or explicitly. When changes occur to the models, it is necessary that the traceability links must be maintained and must be evolved. The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach for the maintenance of trace links when a transformation was completely or partially invoked. In this paper, we have firstly described how traceability links can be stored and how can they be used in an MDE framework. Then we have proposed a traceability maintenance solution based on three main phases: (1) the model comparison phase, (2) the changes detection and classification phase, and (3) the evolution links phase. The proposed approach improves the process of maintaining traceability information in two major ways. First, traces are generated automatically by transformations. T...
Information and Software Technology, 2012
a b s t r a c t Context: Model-Driven Engineering provides a new landscape for dealing with traceability in software development. Objective: Our goal is to analyze the current state of the art in traceability management in the context of Model-Driven Engineering. Method: We use the systematic literature review based on the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham. We propose five research questions and six quality assessments. Results: Of the 157 relevant studies identified, 29 have been considered primary studies. These studies have resulted in 17 proposals. Conclusion: The evaluation shows that the most addressed operations are storage, CRUD and visualization, while the most immature operations are exchange and analysis traceability information.
A pragmatic approach to traceability in model-driven development
2008
A common problem in model-driven software development processes is the tracing of requirements across different phases of the software development life cycle and multiple levels of abstraction down to the code level. Because debugging at the model level is not feasible yet, unwanted or unexpected behavior of the executable system needs to be analyzed at the code level at run-time and in a feedback loop must be traced back to and handled at the model level. Thus, traceability is a very important success factor and quality criterion in software engineering and maintenance and especially when developing high-quality model-driven infrastructures. In this paper we present the conceptual design and prototypical implementation of a lightweight traceability approach that supports tracing requirements across different models and levels of abstraction. While providing support for representing different types of traceability links between design models and implementation details, our approach can easily be integrated into existing MDSD projects without increasing their complexity.
A Visual Traceability Modeling Language
Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, 2010
Software traceability is effort intensive and must be applied strategically in order to maximize its benefits and justify its costs. Unfortunately, development tools provide only limited support for traceability, and as a result users often construct trace queries using generic query languages which require intensive knowledge of the data-structures in which artifacts are stored. In this paper, we propose a usage-centered traceability process that utilizes UML class diagrams to define traceability strategies for a project and then visually represents trace queries as constraints upon subsets of the model. The Visual Trace Modeling Language (VTML) allows users to model queries while hiding the underlying technical details and data structures. The approach has been demonstrated through a prototype system and and evaluated through a preliminary experiment to evaluate the expressiveness and readability of VTML in comparison to generic SQL queries.
Rigorous identification and encoding of trace-links in model-driven engineering
Software & Systems Modeling, 2011
Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) involves the construction and manipulation of many models of different kinds in an engineering process. In principle, models can be used in the product engineering lifecycle in an end-to-end manner for representing requirements, designs and implementations, and assisting in deployment and maintenance. The manipulations applied to models may be manual, but they can also be automated-for example, using model transformations, code generation, and validation. To enhance automated analysis, consistency and coherence of models used in an MDE process, it is useful to identify, establish and maintain trace-links between models. However, the breadth and scope of trace-links that can be used in MDE is substantial, and managing trace-link information can be very complex. In this paper, we contribute to managing the complexity of traceability information in MDE in two ways: firstly, we demonstrate how to identify the different kinds of trace-links that may appear in an endto-end MDE process; secondly, we describe a rigorous approach to defining semantically rich trace-links between models, where the models themselves may be constructed using diverse modelling languages. The definition of rich trace-links allows us to use tools to maintain and analyse traceability relationships.
Towards Traceability Modeling for the Engineering of Heterogeneous Systems
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, 2015
Capturing traceability information among artifacts helps ensure product quality and assists tracking functional and non-functional requirements, and performing system validation and impact analysis. Although literature provides many techniques for modeling traceability, existing solutions are either tailored to specific domains or not complete enough (e.g., lack support to specify traceability link semantics). This research examines the current traceability solutions and identifies the drawbacks that hinder capturing some traceability information of heterogeneous artifacts. In this context, heterogeneous artifacts refer to artifacts that come from widely different modeling notations (e.g., UML, Simulink, natural language text, source code). In this thesis, our contribution comprises a traceability framework that can accommodate the traceability of system engineering artifacts which come from different domains of expertise. The framework includes the followings: First, a set of requirements for a traceability model that are necessary to build a generic traceability model. Second, a generic traceability model that is not domain specific and which, therefore, provides a solution for modeling traceability links among heterogeneous models, that is, models for which traceability links need to be established between artifacts in widely different modeling languages (e.g., UML, block diagrams, informal documents). We argue that the proposed requirements are sufficient to build a traceability model oblivious of the heterogeneity of the models whose artifacts need to be traced. We also argue that our traceability model is extensible in the sense that it can adapt to new modeling languages, new ways of characterizing traceability information for instance, without requiring changes to the model itself; Third, a trace links taxonomy that encompasses semantically well-defined trace links that can be utilized along with the traceability model. The design of our framework is validated through a set of validation methods. Also, it is supported by our findings from a survey and a systematic literature review. v 6.6.2 Analysis of Artifacts and Trace Links Feedback 6.6.3 Analysis of Traceability Tools Feedback 6.7 Conclusion.