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ReqIF Standard
All about IBM DOORS & DOORS Next
ReqIF Standard

How to use the ReqIF Standard with IBM DOORS and DNG

ReqIF which is short for: “Requirements Interchange Format” serves as a container for Requirements which enables easy Requirements import and export between different Requirements Management tools such as IBM’s DOORS classic and DOORS Next but also Siemens’s Polarion and many more.

History of RIF and ReqIF

What is RIF / ReqIF ?

In 2001 the major German car manufacturers (Volkswagen, Daimler-Chrysler, BMW, Audi, Porsche) founded HIS (Herstellerinitiative Software). The mission of HIS was to establish standardised requirements for processes and components from the field of automotive software engineering. Among other things, the working group “Requirements Management” was formed to deal with the problems of requirements exchanging.

 
This working group published the first version of the RIF (Requirements Interchange Format) standard in 2004. In the meantime (2020), this standard has been handed over to the OMG (Object Management Group) for further development. The name has also been changed from the former RIF to ReqIF due to a double assignment. Apart from that, the basic form of this standard has changed only marginally since its first publication.
What does the ReqIF standard offer compared to Office documents?

 

  • A standardised metastructure to move requirements from one RM tool to another. If a vendors ReqIF implementation is conform to the standard, the exchange can also be exchanged across different vendors.
  • Each RM tool manages the assignment of requirement ID’s on its own individual way. For this reason, the standard defines a GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) which uniquely identifies each element and each definition within the ReqIF XML structure. In the case of an import or export, the RM tool maps its own internal ID’s to the GUID’s.
  • The ReqIF can be used to define a write access to specific attributes. This way, there are no conflicts when the data has to be merged again during the re-import.
  • Through the GUID’s, timestamps and write protection, the RM tools are able to update existing requirements via ReqIF.
  • A wide variety of exchange scenarios can be realised via ReqIF (One-way transmission, Roundtripping, Changing the data structure during a roundtrip,…)
Reqif Academy

There are different ways to perform a requirements exchange by using ReqIF. Two of the most frequently used scenarios are briefly described here.

ReqIF Exchange Scenario Nr.1

The OEM defines various attributes which must be edited by the supplier (e.g. comment, status,…). Afterwards he sends the document via ReqIF to the supplier. The supplier imports the document into his RM tool, edits all desired attributes and sends the document back. On the OEM’s side, the supplier’s changes are transferred back to the original document.

ReqIF Exchange Scenario Nr.2

The OEM defines various attributes which must be edited by the supplier (e.g. comment, status,…). Afterwards he sends the document via ReqIF to the supplier. The supplier imports the document into his RM tool, edits all desired attributes and creates his own specifications, based on and linked to the OEM requirements. Now the supplier adds his linked specifications to the ReqIF and sends everything back to the OEM. On the OEM’s side, the edited attributes are transferred back to the original document. Furthermore, copies of the supplier specifications are automatically created and linked to the OEM requirements.

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