Traceability Recovery in RAD Software Systems

This paper proposes an approach and a process to recover traceability links between source code and free text documents in software system developed with extensive use of COTS, middleware, and automatically generated code. The approach relies on a process to filter information gathered from low level artifacts. Information filtering was performed according to a taxonomy of factors affecting traceability links recovery methods. Those factors were directly stem from software rapid development techniques. The approach was applied to recover traceability links from a industrial software, developed with RAD techniques and tools, and making use of COTS (e.g., database access components), automatically generated code (e.g., via GUI builder and report generators), and middleware (i.e., CORBA). Results are presented, along with lessons learned.