Traceability Analysis with Tables

I have a DOORS module that contains multiple large tables. The cells in the tables all have links to requirements in other modules. Does anyone know how to do a Traceability Analysis when the start link point is a cell of a table? When I run the Traceability Analysis wizard it only works for objects that are not in a table.
abeach - Mon Nov 30 09:38:41 EST 2009

Re: Traceability Analysis with Tables
doors36677 - Mon Nov 30 09:43:53 EST 2009

One approach is to write dxl that generates an excel file that you use for traceability.

Re: Traceability Analysis with Tables
abeach - Mon Nov 30 10:29:20 EST 2009

I suspected that may be the case. However, I am rather new to DOORS. Does anyone have any example code that may be suitable for such a task that I may be able to build on?

Re: Traceability Analysis with Tables
doors36677 - Mon Nov 30 15:10:33 EST 2009

abeach - Mon Nov 30 10:29:20 EST 2009
I suspected that may be the case. However, I am rather new to DOORS. Does anyone have any example code that may be suitable for such a task that I may be able to build on?

In most cases, the best starting point is with the layoutDXL generated by the wizard.

Re: Traceability Analysis with Tables
SystemAdmin - Mon Nov 30 23:40:22 EST 2009

Hi,

Regardless of whether you use a tool like DOORS or not, table structures in specifications have always been a pain when it comes to trace analysis and producing trace matrices.

A possible option I've used in the past is as follows:

Use the Analysis Wizard to generate a layout DXL column that displays the info that you want to see about incoming\outgoing links.

The DXL code that the Wizard produces can then be modified to add information about the current object, such as the Object Identifier, followed by the Object Text and then followed by the link data that you originally defined for the Wizard. Now this combination of info may not be useful for normal DOORS objects but for table cells, this will concatenate important data into one cell - read on.

This DXL Layout code can then be converted to a DXL attribute via the Tools > Support Tools menu item.

By default, DOORS tables display the Object Text attribute. The DOORS tables Properties function allows you to override this default and display a specific attribute, in this case it would be the DXL attribute you just created. So, now you can see not only the UID and Object text of the table cell combined together, but you can also see info about incoming\outgoing links as per the Wizard. BTW - the original DXL layout column can be deleted as it's served it's purpose, and there's no need to show the DXL attribute in a column as it's really only for table cells.

So what you have is an ability to display current Object and associated link information in each table cell when you need to. In combination with another DXL layout column showing trace information for non table cells, you pretty much have a complete trace matrix - not 100% pretty - but OK ish.

The level of difficulty here is how to make the table cell look neat as all of this additional info can look a little crammed within the table cell. Will require some experimentation and compromise.
Paul Miller