On-Demand Merging of Traceability Links with Models

Model management operations such as refinement and transformation modify existing or produce new models. To assist both engineers and tools in tracing the path of changes and decisions, maintenance of traceability information is essential. There are two main approaches for storing traceability; in the first, traceability information is embedded inside the models, while in the second, traces form separate models. The former allows users to inspect traceability information in a visual manner, but pollutes the models, while the latter keeps the models clean, but visualization is troublesome. In this paper, we propose a unification of the two approaches via model merging. We suggest that traceability information should be maintained in separate models, which can be merged with the primary model(s) on demand to produce annotated models for inspection purposes. We present a concrete example that demonstrates the practicality of our approach.