Semi-automated traceability maintenance: An architectural overview of traceMaintainer

traceMaintainer is a tool that supports an approach for maintaining post-requirements traceability relations after changes have been made to traced model elements. The update of traceability relations is based upon predefined rules, where each rule is intended to recognize a development activity applied to a model element. Little manual effort or interaction with the developer is required. traceMaintainer can currently be used with a number of commercial software development tools and enables the update of traceability relations stored within these tools. This paper provides an overview of traceMaintainer's architecture and major components.