A Filter-Mechanism for Method-Driven Trace Capture

Traceability is a prerequisite for developing high quality (software) systems. Recording and maintaining all available information is too labor intensive and thus by far too expensive. A project-specific definition of the trace information to be recorded and the method fragments (so called trace fragments) to be executed for recording the information provides a solution for this problem. But the amount of traces to be recorded does not only vary from project to project. It also varies between project phases and even within a project phase. As a consequence project-specific trace fragments need to be adapted according to the actual project phase. In this paper we propose a model-based filter mechanism to significantly reduce the required effort to adapt trace fragments. By defining appropriate filters the project manager is able to (dynamically) adapt the project-specific trace fragments to the actual needs. We present an example to highlight the benefits of the approach and discuss possible extensions. † CREWS Report Series 98–10. A version of this paper appears in the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Advanced Information System Engineering, Pisa, Italy, June 8–12, 1998.