Combining Xtext and OSLC for Integrated Model-Based Requirements Engineering

Abstract

Requirements engineering is still a very challenging issue. This is true for most embedded systems and especially for safety-critical ones. A good requirements engineering process is vital for the development of high quality products, but these systems are often highly complex which complicates the respective activities. The use of natural language requirements is common practice, because they are easy to use and understand for people working in different engineering disciplines. However, natural language is ambiguous and vague and may lead to misunderstandings and incorrect implementations. Another big challenge is the often loose coupling of requirements and other development artifacts which hinders traceability and thus impact analysis. This paper presents an approach based on the Xtext framework for the implementation of a restricted requirements language to support engineers in writing requirements with higher quality. In order to improve tool integration, the approach supports OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration), which is a promising method to better support traceability using linked data principles. By using OSLC it is possible to easily extend existing requirements management tools with our proposed implementation for requirements semi-formalization as long as requirements management tools provide the respective OSLC interface. Finally, we will demonstrate our concepts using an example from the automotive domain. The example shows how the tool implementation can be integrated in a tool chain.