xmlTRAM+: using XML technology to manage software requirements and architectures

Information systems are increasingly being used in all aspects of an organization’s business activities. These systems will inevitably evolve over time. The system development knowledge is a key to the understanding and evolution of these systems. As such, the system development knowledge is part of the corporate knowledge that needs to be properly managed. In particular, the system requirements and architecture design are the most important system development knowledge. In this paper, we introduce an XML-based tool for managing system requirements and architectures. The use of the XML technology allows the system requirements and architectures to be easily shared across the organization. The issues discussed include a conceptual model, a logical model and a physical model for the management of system requirements and architectures. In fact, this three-step development process points to a typical development methodology for the development of XML-based systems.