A model for tracing variability from features to product-line architectures: a case study in smart grids

In current software systems with highly volatile requirements, traceability plays a key role to maintain the consistency between requirements and code. Traceability between artifacts involved in the development of Software Product Lines (SPL) is still more critical because it is necessary to guarantee that the selection of variants that realize the different SPL products meet the requirements. Current SPL traceability mechanisms trace from variability in features to variations in the configuration of product-line architecture (PLA) in terms of adding and removing components. However, it is not always possible to materialize the variable features of a SPL through adding or removing components, since sometimes they are materialized inside components, i.e. in part of their functionality: a class, a service and/or an interface. Additionally, variations that happen inside components may crosscut several components of architecture. These kinds of variations are still challenging and their traceability is not currently well-supported. Therefore, it is not possible to guarantee that those SPL products with these kinds of variations meet the requirements. This paper presents a solution for tracing variability from features to PLA by taking these kinds of variations into account. This solution is based on models and traceability between models in order to automate SPL configuration by selecting the variants and realizing the product application. The FPLA modeling framework supports this solution which has been deployed in a software factory. Validation has consisted in putting the solution into practice to develop a product line of power metering management applications for Smart Grids

Traceability Management Architectures Supporting Total Traceability in the Context of Software Engineering

In the area of Software Engineering, traceability is defined as the capability to track requirements, their evolution and transformation in different components related to engineering process, as well as the management of the relationships between those components. However the current state of the art in traceability does not keep in mind many of the elements that compose a product, specially those created before requirements arise, nor the appropriated use of traceability to manage the knowledge underlying in order to be handled by other organizational or engineering processes. In this work we describe the architecture of a reference model that establishes a set of definitions, processes and models which allow a proper management of traceability and further uses of it, in a wider context than the one related to software development

Traceability Management Architectures Supporting Total Traceability in the Context of Software Engineering

In the area of Software Engineering, traceability is defined as the capability to track requirements, their evolution and transformation in different components related to engineering process, as well as the management of the relationships between those components. However the current state of the art in traceability does not keep in mind many of the elements that compose a product, specially those created before requirements arise, nor the appropriated use of traceability to manage the knowledge underlying in order to be handled by other organizational or engineering processes. In this work we describe the architecture of a reference model that establishes a set of definitions, processes and models which allow a proper management of traceability and further uses of it, in a wider context than the one related to software development

Traceability for Model Driven, Software Product Line Engineering

Traceability is an important challenge for software organizations. This is true for traditional software development and even more so in new approaches that introduce more variety of artefacts such as Model Driven development or Software Product Lines. In this paper we look at some aspect of the interaction of Traceability, Model Driven development and Software Product Line

Establishing a Benchmark Dataset for Traceability Link Recovery between Software Architecture Documentation and Models

In research, evaluation plays a key role to assess the performance of an approach. When evaluating approaches, there is a wide range of possible types of studies that can be used, each with different properties. Benchmarks have the benefit that they establish clearly defined standards and baselines. However, when creating new benchmarks, researchers face various problems regarding the identification of potential data, its mining, as well as the creation of baselines. As a result, some research domains do not have any benchmarks at all. This is the case for traceability link recovery between software architecture documentation and software architecture models. In this paper, we create and describe an open-source benchmark dataset for this research domain. With this benchmark, we define a baseline with a simple approach based on information retrieval techniques. This way, we provide other researchers a way to evaluate and compare their approaches

A Systematic Review of Tracing Solutions in Software Product Lines

Software Product Lines are large-scale, multi-unit systems that enable massive, customized production. They consist of a base of reusable artifacts and points of variation that provide the system with flexibility, allowing generating customized products. However, maintaining a system with such complexity and flexibility could be error prone and time consuming. Indeed, any modification (addition, deletion or update) at the level of a product or an artifact would impact other elements. It would therefore be interesting to adopt an efficient and organized traceability solution to maintain the Software Product Line. Still, traceability is not systematically implemented. It is usually set up for specific constraints (e.g. certification requirements), but abandoned in other situations. In order to draw a picture of the actual conditions of traceability solutions in Software Product Lines context, we decided to address a literature review. This review as well as its findings is detailed in the present article.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, 7 table

Software Traceability for Multi-Agent Systems Implemented Using BDI Architecture

The development of multi-agent software systems is considered a complex task due to (a) the large number and heterogeneity of documents generated during the development of these systems, (b) the lack of support for the whole development life-cycle by existing agent-oriented methodologies requiring the use of different methodologies, and (c) the possible incompleteness of the documents and models generated during the development of the systems. In order to alleviate the above problems, in this thesis, a traceability framework is described to support the development of multi-agent systems. The framework supports automatic generation of traceability relations and identification of missing elements (i.e., completeness checking) in the models created during the development life-cycle of multi-agent systems using the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture. Traceability has been recognized as an important activity in the software development process. Traceability relations can guarantee and improve software quality and can help with several tasks such as the evolution of software systems, reuse of parts of the system, validation that a system meets its requirements, understanding of the rationale for certain design decisions, identification of common aspects of the system, and analysis of implications of changes in the system. The traceability framework presented in this thesis concentrates on multi-agent software systems developed using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Here, a traceability reference model is presented for software artefacts generated when using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Different types of relations between the artefacts are identified. The framework is based on a rule-based approach to support automatic identification of traceability relations and missing elements between the generated artefacts. Software models represented in XML were used to support the heterogeneity of models and tools used during the software development life-cycle. In the framework, the rules are specified in an extension of XQuery to support (i) representation of the consequence part of the rules, i.e. the actions to be taken when the conditions are satisfied, and (ii) extra functions to cover some of the traceability relations being proposed and completeness checking of the models. A prototype tool has been developed to illustrate and evaluate the work. The work has been evaluated in terms of recall and precision measurements in three different case studies. One small case study of an Automatic Teller Machine application, one medium case study of an Air Traffic Control Environment application, and one large case study of an Electronic Bookstore application

Metamodel for Tracing Concerns across the Life Cycle

Several aspect-oriented approaches have been proposed to specify aspects at different phases in the software life cycle. Aspects can appear within a phase, be refined or mapped to other aspects in later phases, or even disappear.\ud Tracing aspects is necessary to support understandability and maintainability of software systems. Although several approaches have been introduced to address traceability of aspects, two important limitations can be observed. First, tracing is not yet tackled for the entire life cycle. Second, the traceability model that is applied usually refers to elements of specific aspect languages, thereby limiting the reusability of the adopted traceability model.We propose the concern traceability metamodel (CTM) that enables traceability of concerns throughout the life cycle, and which is independent from the aspect languages that are used. CTM can be enhanced to provide additional properties for tracing, and be instantiated to define\ud customized traceability models with respect to the required aspect languages. We have implemented CTM in the tool M-Trace, that uses XML-based representations of the models and XQuery queries to represent tracing information. CTM and M-Trace are illustrated for a Concurrent Versioning System to trace aspects from the requirements level to architecture design level and the implementation

Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated