Traceability between requirements and design: a transformational approach

Modern computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools raise the need for traceability, i.e. the ability to control the consistency between software documents produced at different stages of the software life-cycle. The authors describe the transformation between an integrated requirements engineering language based on structured analysis and the entity relationship model, and a modern design language. The transformation works incrementally and is sensitive to changes to already transformed parts. The authors outline the transformation algorithm and compare the approach to those found in the literature. A tool which implements the proposed algorithm and supports the proposed traceability is described. The potential and the limits of this approach are highlighted