Establishing and maintaining semantically rich traceability : a metamodelling aproach

This thesis addresses the problem of model-to-model traceability in Model Driven Engineering (MDE). A MDE process typically involves models expressed in different modelling languages that capture different views of the system under development. To enhance automation, consistency and coherency, establishing and maintaining semantically rich traceability links between models used throughout the software development lifecycle is of paramount importance. This thesis deals with the various challenges associated with providing traceability support in the context of MDE by defining a domain-specific, model-based traceability approach, which supports the main traceability activities in a rigorous and semi-automatic manner. To evaluate the validity of the thesis proposition, a reference implementation has been provided. The results obtained from the application of the proposed approach to various case-studies and examples have confirmed the feasibility and benefits of such an approach.