Frequently Asked Questions

YAKINDU Traceability supports everyone who needs to ensure traceability over the toolchain. It supports all user groups in performing their tasks in the context of traceability.

• Your task is to create and manage trace links? YAKINDU Traceability gives you the means to create links manually as well as automatically derive them from artifact data, based on an individual scheme. If artifact data or link data change, YAKINDU Traceability helps you ensure that links are still valid.
• Managers will welcome YAKINDU Traceabilities s rich dashboard and reporting functionalities, providing them with an overview on the current project and its traceability status, e.g. the current coverage of requirements by successful test cases. YAKINDU Traceabilities query language is a powerful tool to formulate even very complex project-specific questions, to be answered once or on a regular basis.
• If you are a system administrator, YAKINDU Traceability supports you in setting up configurations in such a way that your fellow employees can access their proper data easily.

YAKINDU Traceability is highly configurable to integrate with the toolchain you are using. Therefore, we provide two demo/evaluation options:

• Self-guided evaluation: This evaluation offer comprises a demo version supporting a fixed set of adapters. It comes with a populated workspace representing a “small V-model” which consists of stakeholder requirements and software requirements, specified in Microsoft Word documents, test specifications in Microsoft Excel, a Matlab Simulink design, and some C source code. In order to illustrate the analysis capabilities of YAKINDU Traceability, sample traceability queries and reports are already set up for you. You may want to look at the included videos to learn more about the features of YAKINDU Traceability. Download the self-guided evaluation.
• Guided evaluation: We are also offering to set up YAKINDU Traceability together with you and suited for your specific needs. We will configure YAKINDU Traceability according to your use cases and demonstrate how it can really chain your tools. Working closely together, we will provide customized solutions for your particular problems. As a side effect, the knowledge transfer happens en passant. Feel free to contact us any time to ask about the details of this offer.

In either case, the evaluation period is not limited strictly – we always suggest to choose your weapons carefully.

YAKINDU Traceability consists of core functionalities plus different adapters allowing you to connect to the tools in your toolchain. By way of these adapters you can access data from these tools and create trace links between them. The costs for YAKINDU Traceability largely depend on the adapters you need. Please contact us to give us information about your toolchain, and we will be glad to give you an overview on the costs.

This is highly configurable and to a large degree depends on your toolchain processes and preferences. You can either store links in YAKINDU Traceability’s own link storage file format, leaving your artifacts unaffected. Alternatively, you can maintain the links invasively within the artifacts. For example, you could save link information as cells in an Excel sheet or as comments in a Java source file. What is possible and how it works in detail differs from tool to tool. Non-invasive and invasive approaches both have there specific advantages. You can even mix both approaches.

Technically, YAKINDU Traceability rests upon the Eclipse platform, and the latter provides a very flexible resource management. The workspace bundles the data you are working with in a single place, no matter whether they reside physically. The spectrum of functions comprises implicit or explicit copies, symbolic links for files and folders, and more.

Yes, you can control the refresh behaviour by means of the preference settings. If you check “Refresh using native hooks or polling” in the general workspace preferences, YT refreshes automatically after changes.

Yes. The IBM DOORS adapter can be configured in a way to consider only artifacts and links that are present in a certain baseline. You can find more about this feature in the YT documentation.

Per default, the YT Explorer view displays linked artifacts only. However, there is an easy means to also show unlinked artifacts: In the toolbar of the YT Explorer view, click on the “Show also unlinked artifacts” button. YT Explorer will now present linked as well as unlinked artifacts. You can identify unlinked artifacts in the tree by the icon in front of the artifact name: It’s adapter icon is decorated with the icon used in the toolbar.

YT Explorer shows its content in groups. You can choose from four different grouping rules, which are explained in detail in section Show links based on different groupings in the YT documentation. Select the link type grouping to order the artifacts based on their link types.

Yes, YAKINDU Traceability supports directed as well as bidirectional traceability. In the YT configuration, you can define which type of artifact can be linked with which other type – the direction is not important here. However, YT Overview provides a toggle button that allows you to analyze traceability either bidirectionally or undirectionally. More on this in our blog post “About bidirectional traceability, link semantics and a toggle button.”

YAKINDU Traceability provides different means to analyse the current status of your project. For example, the YT Dashboard view displays pie charts with all artifacts, linked artifacts or unlinked artifacts.

To support some deeper analysis, YAKINDU Traceability comes with an easy-to-use query language for the creation of all kinds of custom metrics. We provide various query templates to support you in writing your own queries.

Also, you can generate custom reports answering your individual, project-specific questions and export the results, for example in Excel.

Find out more about how to analyse the traceability status of your project in the YT documentation.

Yes, this is possible. YAKINDU Traceability can run on continuous integration servers, such as Jenkins, Travis, etc. This allows to execute queries and export the results or to create individual reports in a regular manner. It is also possible to write the results into a database.

You can create a traceability matrix by use of YAKINDU Traceability’s query language. Navigate to the YT Queries view, e.g. in the Analysis perspective, and open a query file. In that file, please add the following query and replace the green-colored artifact type names by names of your own configuration. Tip: While editing the query file, press [Ctrl+Space] to be supported by code completion proposals and template suggestions. To create a traceability matrix, you can use the query template “Trace Matrix”.

Save the query file and execute the created query in the YT Queries view. The traceability matrix will be shown in the YT Query Results view.

YAKINDU Traceability provides different means to identify unlinked artifacts, like requirements. One way is to activate the switch "Show also unlinked artifacts" in the YT Explorer view and navigate to the artifact type configured for your requirements. Alternatively, you can use the YT Dashboard view that can be found in the Analysis perspective. In the dropdown field, select "Not linked artifacts". Afterwards, click on the pie section of the type you are interested in. YT Dashboard Details will show you a list with all unlinked artifacts of this type.

You can also use the query language to answer this question. Navigate to the YT Queries view, e.g. in the Analysis perspective, and open a query file. In that file, please add the following query and replace the green-colored artifact type names by names of your own configuration. Tip: While editing the query file, press [Ctrl+Space] to be supported by code completion proposals and template suggestions. To identify unlinked artifacts, you can use the "All unlinked artifacts for" query template.

Save the query file and execute the created query in the YT Queries view. The unlinked artifacts will be shown in the YT Query Results view.

YAKINDU Traceability’s query language includes a function to count elements. You can set up a query that first collects all traces from one artifact type to another artifact type and then use the @count function at the end of your query. The following example would result in a list of “Software Requirements” linked with “Software qualification test results”. The last column of that list contains the number of “Software qualification test results” linked to the corresponding “Software Requirement”.

This is a typical use case for the query language. The example below shows how to find all “Software Requirements” that have the attribute “Needs test” set to true and are not linked to a respective “Software qualification test specification”.

Our idea is to adjust YAKINDU Traceability to your process and not to adjust your process to our tool. Therefore it is highly configurable and expandable, e.g. to support new tools. This gives you the perfect basis to comply with your process standards. Furthermore, we have a lot of experience in introducing traceability in companies that need to comply with process standards. So we can also provide you with professional consulting services in setting up the necessary traceability level in your company, based on our experience in this domain.