Enhancing traceability using ontologies

Traceability refers to the ability to link information in a process chain. This paper proposes the integration of ontologies into the Unified Process (UP) [1] to provide concept-based traceability throughout the software lifecycle. This approach allows the integration of the different models of a software system including business, requirements, analysis and design models in a lower granularity degree than conventional requirements traceability approaches. To assist the designers in creating the ontology and linking concepts to artifacts we provide a tool integrated with an UML modeler.