Eclipse Capra is a traceability management tool. It allows the creation of trace links between arbitrary artefacts, provides features to edit them and keep them consistent, and visualise the relationships between them. This includes traceability matrices and graph visualisations that are helpful for reporting and change impact analysis.
In essence, Eclipse Capra allows the creation of trace links between arbitrary artefacts, as long as an adapter for these artefacts is available. Eclipse Capra currently natively supports elements from UML, SysML, AADL, EAST-ADL, as well as ReqIF models created in, e.g., Eclipse Papyrus, Eclipse EATOP, and ProR. Furthermore, adapters for test case executions managed by a continuous integration server like Hudson or Jenkins can be traced to. There is also support for source code files supported by the Eclipse Platform (e.g., Java, C, Python) and tasks from an issue tracking system supported by Eclipse Mylyn. External artefacts for which the Eclipse Platform does not offer built-in support can also be linked if a fitting adapter is provided. Built-in capabilities allow linking to Office documents and documents hosted by Google Docs. A generic file handler and a handler for EMF models also provide capabilities for formats that currently have no native support.
Once trace links are established, Eclipse Capra offers features to manage them. If a model element that is linked to is moved, e.g., Eclipse Capra will notify the user and allow changing the link accordingly. The same support is given for model elements that are deleted or renamed. Quick fixes are available to fix most isses in a semi-automatic fashion.
Eclipse Capra also offers a visualisation of the trace links that allows developers to traverse the relationships established through the links and understand how the different artefacts are connected. This is helpful when assessing the impact a change has (e.g., which design artefacts need to be adapted when a requirement has changed?) or when trying to understand how the design artefacts in a complex development project are connected. In addition, Eclipse Capra can display traceability matrices, as requested by standards like ISO 26262.
The tool is highly extensible. The meta-model used for the traceability links can easily be adapted to a specific end-user's needs. Eclipse Capra's modular architecture allows exchanging the persistence, the visualisation, and the management modules easily. New adapters for additional artefacts can easily be added without re-compilation. This allows end-users to customise almost every aspect of the tool if needed. At the same time, we provide sensible defaults that will allow the majority of users to use Capra out of the box without extensive configuration.
More Resources
A video introduction to Eclipse Capra from the Eclipse Open Research Webinar Series
The MobSTr dataset -- a complete systems engineering example that shows Eclipse Capra's extensibility
Citing Eclipse Capra
If you are a researcher and mention Eclipse Capra in your publications, please use the following reference:
Salome Maro and Jan-Philipp Steghöfer, "Capra: A Configurable and Extendable Traceability Management Tool," 2016 IEEE 24th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), Beijing, 2016, pp. 407-408, doi: 10.1109/RE.2016.19.
Update Site
You can find the update site for Eclipse Capra 0.8.2 at: https://download.eclipse.org/capra/releases/0.8.2/
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