A Semi-Automated Approach for the Co-Refinement of Requirements and Architecture Models

Abstract

Requirements and architecture specifications are strongly related as the second provides a solution to a problem stated by the first. This coupling is typically realized by traceability links and maintaining such links becomes extremely difficult as both requirements and architecture specifications frequently evolve, and in particular when the architecture is refined providing an increasing level of details. In such case, not only the traceability must evolve but the requirements must be refined as well. We present a novel semi-automated approach to evolve non-functional requirements and their traceability links following system's architecture refinement in the context of design space exploration and automated code generation. The approach has been prototyped for AADL models refined with the RAMSES tool and for model transformations implemented as Story Diagrams.