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A Formal Approach for Traceability Preservation in Software Development Process

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Theoretical Computer Science (NCTCS 2023)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1944))

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Abstract

Traceability is the ability to trace the usage of artifacts during the software lifecycle process. Though the benefits of establishing a traceability software system have been widely recognized, it is difficult to be applied well in actual development. In this paper, we propose a new method for traceability preservation which may be used in the practical software development process. A formal model for the traceability of software artifacts is first presented, which consists of variable traceability relations, classification and version number controls. We then present the composition, restriction and refinement operations in the software development process. Next, the preservation of traceability under these three operations is discussed respectively. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we finally develop a prototype tool named Formalized Software Management System (FSMS).

This work is supported by National Key R &D Program of China (No. 2022YFB3305104), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61772006, 61772004 and 12261027) and Scientific Research Foundation for Advanced Talents of Chengdu University of Information Technology (No. KYTZ202009).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very valuable comments and very helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chengdu Institute of Computer Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, China

    Hao Wen & Jinzhao Wu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Hao Wen & Jinzhao Wu

  3. College of Software Engineering, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu, China

    Jianmin Jiang & Jianqing Li

  4. College of Mathematics and Informatics, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China

    Zhong Hong

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  1. Hao Wen
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  2. Jinzhao Wu
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  3. Jianmin Jiang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jianmin Jiang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China

    Zhiping Cai

  2. University of Electronic Science and Technology, Chengdu, China

    Mingyu Xiao

  3. Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jialin Zhang

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Wen, H., Wu, J., Jiang, J., Li, J., Hong, Z. (2024). A Formal Approach for Traceability Preservation in Software Development Process. In: Cai, Z., Xiao, M., Zhang, J. (eds) Theoretical Computer Science. NCTCS 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1944. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7743-7_2

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