Traceability and Provenance Issues in Global Model Management

Establishing and using traceability and provenance between different models is a very important issue in complex software systems. Traceability in the small (local traceability) handles the trace information between model elements. Traceability in the large (global traceability) handles traceability information between models as a whole. Current solutions are more or less adhoc approaches that mix local and global traceability. In this paper, we present global model management as a generic solution to support traceability in the large. Based on previous experience on traceability in the small using model weaving, we propose a novel approach that uses traceability megamodels. The traceability megamodels are extensible, thus supporting different kinds of traceability. Consequently, weaving models and megamodels are two complementary approaches to deploy a generic and complete traceability solution.