AnalyticGraph.com: Toward Next Generation Requirements Modeling and Reasoning Tools

Graphical Requirements Modeling (GRM) consists of representing requirements in diagrams: requirements (and other relevant information) are represented as nodes, and relationships between them as edges. Relationships can show, for example, that one requirement refines another, that some are in conflict with others, that they are more or less desirable, and so on. Various software tools have been proposed over the years as a support to doing GRM, some capable of performing computations over diagrams, such as searching for text strings, or determining if a requirement is satisfied (and how much). We present yet another tool, available at AnalyticGraph.com. The tool departs from much of prior work in the following ways. (i) The tool is a web application, is available on-demand, and requires no installation of specialized software. (ii) Each model made with the tool gets its own permanent and unique URL, so that models can be linked in research papers. (iii) If a model on AnalyticGraph is linked in a paper, then any reader can click on the link, open a free account, and edit and run a copy of the linked model. (iv) The tool supports the definition of various requirements modeling languages. (v) Models are stored in a graph database, and standard graph queries (such as find the shortest path between two nodes) are included by default. (vi) It is possible to combine models made with various languages, and do computations over the resulting mixed models.