Many new features in ReqIF Studio

Over the last two months, we put a lot of work into ReqIF Studio: We polished the rough edges and we implemented new features. Maybe you already noticed these, as we rolled some of them out silently, like jumping to the target of links. Others we already announced, like Consequent, the ReqIF validator. But here is the full list.

So here is our Christmas gift to you, and to the open source.

Before we start: Trends in Systems Engineering (German)

We mentioned it before: We launched a new German-language blog, Systems Engineering Trends. Recent Stories include:

• Was man über SYSMOD wissen muss
• Fünf Trends im Systems Engineering
• Kann Deutschland im Systems Engineering mithalten?
• Rezension: Just Enough Systems Engineering

If you speak German, please check it out, and please forward this to interested friends and colleagues. Visit SE-Trends >>

New Features in ReqIF Studio

Here is the list of new features:

Bidirectional SpecRelations

SpecRelations (Links) have a source and a target. Therefore, there are incoming and outgoing links. We always counted the number of incoming links, but upon double clicking on the link column, only the outgoing links were shown. We finally change that, so now you can also see the incoming links.

You can see this to the right, where three requirements are linked from Start to Middle to End. Also note that the lines between SpecRelations are weaker, so that the SpecObjects are visually grouped with their SpecRelations.

Following SpecRelations

Another long overdue feature: Users don’t just want to see the target of a Link (which is shown in the Properties view, if the rightmost column is selected); they also want to be able to jump to the target requirements in the Specification where it is used.

This is not as trivial as it sounds: Requirements (SpecObjects) are referenced. This means that the SpecObject can be referenced multiple times, or not at all. In those scenarios, the tool lists all locations where the SpecObject is used in a dialog.

Faster SpecRelations

And while we were dealing with the linking, we also made it faster. If you encountered performance problems with SpecRelations in the past, please give it a try again.

Validation everywhere

We recently released Consequent, which performs ReqIF validation. We now automatically validate upon saving, so that you always know if something is wrong. You can disable this via Window | Preferences | ProR | Validate ReqIF on save

Read the full article: Many new features in ReqIF Studio