Domain Knowledge Discovery Guided by Software Trace Links
This addresses the need for automated domain knowledge discovery to support Software Engineering tasks like impact analysis and project Q&A, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing trace link concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of discovering domain terminology and their interrelationships in software-intensive systems, which is complex and requires significant expertise, by presenting a novel approach that leverages trace links to guide mining of domain facts, with a proof-of-concept evaluation showing it aids in discovery even in highly complex technical domains.
Software-intensive projects are specified and modeled using domain terminology. Knowledge of the domain terminology is necessary for performing many Software Engineering tasks such as impact analysis, compliance verification, and safety certification. However, discovering domain terminology and reasoning about their interrelationships for highly technical software and system engineering domains is a complex task which requires significant domain expertise and human effort. In this paper, we present a novel approach for leveraging trace links in software intensive systems to guide the process of mining facts that contain domain knowledge. The trace links which drive our mining process, define relationships between artifacts such as regulations and requirements and enable a guided search through high-yield combinations of domain terms. Our proof-of-concept evaluation shows that our approach aids in the discovery of domain facts even in highly complex technical domains. These domain facts can provide support for a variety of Software Engineering activities. As a use case, we demonstrate how the mined facts can facilitate the task of project Q&A.