CPA-SEL-T: Collaborative Research: Traceability+: a Service Oriented Framework to Support Value-Added Software Traceability

Proposals: P0811140/P0810924/P0811021 Title: Traceability+: a Service Oriented Framework to Support Value-Added Software Traceability PIs: Jane Hayes, Jane Huang, and Jonathan Maletic Traceability plays an important role in the development and assurance of software systems that permeate our society. It helps to assure that an as-built system correctly implements all requirements by supporting change impact assessment, re-engineering of applications, and other critical software engineering activities. Although previous work has focused on delivering point solutions that address specific traceability issues, this research will develop a new, powerful traceability model, Traceability+, that will deliver value-added traceability services designed to support diverse stakeholders as they perform critical software engineering activities. To accomplish this, the investigators will develop a new traceability query language and associated query mechanism, identify stakeholders' traceability-related needs, develop traceability services to meet those needs, build a knowledge base of traceability tasks and related queries, and handle varied data formats. If successful, the research could transform the community?s understanding of traceability and its benefits across the software engineering lifecycle. The evaluation of the proposed framework and dissemination of results is enhanced by having industry personnel actively participate as senior staff on the project and by an already-established Center of Excellence for Software Traceability.