OSLC Tool Integration and Systems Engineering -- The Relationship between the Two Worlds

OSLC is a new standard for the integration of tools used in different phases of software development. It enables to establish relations among different data artifacts throughout the life cycle of an application. OSLC aims to provide seamless integration of life cycle management tools and it enables to have explicit relationships among data artifacts from the early development phases, i.e., Requirements. This helps to gain a better holistic view over the development of software as a system development activity. Systems engineering is in essence an interdisciplinary approach to understand, design, and manage the complexity of different projects and phenomena throughout their life cycle. In this context, to have a holistic view of the system is not a desirable, but a fundamental prerequisite. In this work, we i) investigate how OSLC can strengthen a systemic view in tool integration scenarios and ii) discuss also how systems engineering concepts and principles can be relevant to describe such scenarios. This is done by identifying the relationships among systems engineering and OSLC core concepts. Finally, we show, as a proof of concept, a concrete application of OSLC in building an integrated tool chain.