Generating system documentation augmented with traceability information, using a central XML-based repository

Many companies have difficulties with creating and maintaining proper documentation of the systems they build. In my Master’s graduation project, I investigated a new way of creating and maintaining documentation of any type of system. The project rests on two pillars: generating documentation from a central repository on one hand, and adding traceability support on the other. Since the project took place at the software development department of Chess, for validation, the approach was applied to creating software systems. The prototype that was created and validated, consists of a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE, and a command line application. The installation of the plug-in enriches the Eclipse environment with functionality for creation and maintenance of documentation, as well as several types of analyses based on traceability of system artefacts. The command line application can be invoked from an automatic build script to generate documentation from, or perform analyses on the repository.