Alternative solution for requirements import

[EA2412]

Hello everybody,

I´m looking forward to a solution to import requirements from an external requirements management tool like Doors. I mean I have already tested the MDG link for Doors but I´m looking for an alternative solution. Something like a synchronization with MySQL database etc.

Does anybody have an idea?

Thanks in advance

[Oliver F.]

Plenty of ideas of which is nothing really existing.

Of course it is possible to use the various import/export functionalities EA provides and you can even write an addin which reads a mySQL or Access database and then creates requirement objects from them.

But there is a drawback - nowadays requirements are not that static anymore as they were in former times. Current development methodologies in fact consider that requirements are modified, added, and removed during development phases. In those cases you will have to consider synchronising these requirements to reflect the new state. Simply reimporting them is not a good idea as it either overwrites or replicates the existing ones leaving you with a new problem.
The DOORS MDG link cares about this, unfortunately it only goes one way.

So importing is not the only issue- synchronising is the challenge in this area.

Oliver

[EA2412]

Hello Oliver,

I know that problem of changing requirements in the development process. The problem of the MDG Link for Doors is that changes which have been made inside the Doors module would only be displayed in the import field of the addin. It would be even better if the changes would also be displayed in the project browser. Do you have developped an own tool for the import?

[Oliver F.]

Hello Oliver,

I know that problem of changing requirements in the development process. The problem of the MDG Link for Doors is that changes which have been made inside the Doors module would only be displayed in the import field of the addin. It would be even better if the changes would also be displayed in the project browser. Do you have developped an own tool for the import?

We are using DOORS.

You can do a search on the requirements package for the LastModified date to see which element has changed since the last import.

To find new elements we came up with the solution to apply stereotypes to imported requirements or change the state of those to "evaluated" or something similar.
New elements do not have that stereotype (or state) which can be easily found with another search attribute.

So the search would look like (abstract):
Show elements where [date>last modification date OR stereotype!=RequirementsType]

Something like that.

Oliver