| %******************************************************************************* |
| % Copyright (c) 2014 Formal Mind GmbH and others |
| % All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials |
| % are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0 |
| % which accompanies this distribution, and is available at |
| % http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html |
| % |
| % Contributors: |
| % Michael Jastram - initial Copy |
| %******************************************************************************/ |
| |
| The importance of requirements has been recognized for a long time. And with the advent of computer-aided engineering tools, a number of proprietary solutions have popped up all over the place. While this has helped organizations to manage their requirements more efficiently, interoperability became a major issue. |
| |
| The development of the ReqIF standard for requirements exchange finally provided a standard, feature-rich way of accessing requirements data. Eclipse was the obvious choice for a reference implementation of this open standard. The result is the Eclipse Requirements Modeling Framework, a complete, open source, user-friendly implementation of ReqIF. |
| |
| This handbook is a comprehensive documentation of the \pror{} tool, which is based on Eclipse RMF. All answers with respect to tool use should be answered here. Furthermore, it contains a small tutorial (Chapter~\ref{sec:tutorial}) to get you started quickly. |
| |
| Keep in mind that tools are meant to support processes, not the other way around. \pror{} is a flexible tool, and it can be tailored to support your processes. But development processes are explicitly outside the scope of this handbook. |
| |
| \section{ReqIF.academy} |
| \index{ReqIF.academy} |
| \label{sec:reqif.academy} |
| |
| For a tool to be useful, it is crucial to have quick access to all related information. \href{https://reqif.academy}{Reqif.academy} has been created for exactly that purpose. Instead of hunting information down from all over the web, ReqIF.academy provides all information in one spot. |
| |
| \begin{definition}{ReqIF.academy} |
| ReqIF.academy (\url{https://reqif.academy}) is an online knowledge base for ReqIF and ReqIF Studio. Visit it for videos, templates, checklists, references and of course software and this handbook. |
| \end{definition} |
| |
| At ReqIF.academy, you find the following content: |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[Videos.] Videos cover ReqIF Studio, requirements exchange, the Requirements Interchange Format, and much more. New videos are added on a regular basis. |
| \item[Software.] Software includes ReqIF Studio itself, for various platforms, and a number of free and premium software components. |
| \item[Books.] A number of free and premium eBooks, including this handbook as PDF or in print. |
| \item[References.] Many cheat sheets and other references, including one for the ReqIF standard. |
| \item[FAQs.] A number of continuously updated Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). |
| \item[Checklists.] For commonly performed tasks, you can download appropriate checklists. |
| \item[Templates.] We will continuously add templates to the library, to help you get started quickly. |
| \item[Papers.] The library includes various publications related to the subject matter. |
| \end{description} |
| |
| \section{ReqIF Studio, RMF and ProR} |
| \index{ProR} |
| \label{sec:rmf_derivatives} |
| |
| There are a few derivatives of the RMF project that may be confusing. The following will |
| help you to understand the ecosystem and how the pieces fit together: |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[RMF.] The Requirements Modeling Framework (RMF) is an open source project that is managed by the Eclipse Foundation. It consists of software code, documentation, mailing lists, online forum, etc. It is a software framework, and you need an application to use it. Like: |
| \item[ReqIF Studio.] This is an application that is based on RMF and maintained by the company Formal Mind. For users who ``just want to edit requirements'', this is the most convenient way of getting started. ReqIF Studio contains some useful extensions to RMF, which are called: |
| \item[Essentials.] The company Formal Mind created this collection of add-ons that make RMF much more usable. For instance, Essentials allows for the editing and rendering of formatted text. |
| \item[ProR.] ProR is the old name of the user interface that allows users to work with ReqIF-based requirements. You can build ProR from the RMF sources, but there is no ready-to-use download of ProR. |
| \end{description} |
| |
| \section{Compatibility} |
| |
| \pror{} and RMF require at least Java 6 and Eclipse 3.8. Some features of ProR Essentials require Java 7 from Oracle (not openJDK). Of course, you can use newer versions of Java without problems. |
| |
| ReqIF Studio is based on Eclipse Luna (4.4). This has not been upgraded, as some large organizations still use fairly old versions of Java. Using a newer version of Eclipse would require a newer version of Java as well. |
| |