With a large room full of the latest requirements tools, RE-Day participants would have had more than enough to do just to look at all the tools on offer. For those who were not there, or who spent the whole day listening to the talks in the other rooms, here are some quick highlights and unique selling points of some of the different tools that were on display. The tools are in alphabetical order.

IA: What are the unique features of Cradle?

Malcolm Boyack of Structures Software Systems Limited (3SL): Cradle is a full life-cycle management tool, not a single-phase product. It can integrate any other applications. It is both multi-user and multi-site. It has built-in Configuration Management. It supports risk analysis via a user-extensible database and checking.

IA: How does Cradle do that?

MB: At the centre is Cradle-PDM, which links up all the other tools. There is a document editor, a charting tool, a performance modeller, a system modelling tool, and a source document manager. The idea is that we manage systems all through their life-cycle.

IA: From cradle to grave?

MB: That's where the name comes from. Once you have requirements in the database you can do analysis and design with dataflow diagrams, OMT, state diagrams, use cases, object interactions and so on.

IA: How do you trace requirements?

MB: The Cradle database lets you cross-reference any information to anything else. It also creates its own cross-references, such as from source documents to requirements.

IA: What are DOORS' unique selling points?

Amanda Haisman-Baker of Quality Systems & Software (QSS): DOORS has a very strong method basis. It is very easy to use. There is a very short learning curve. It offers unique navigation of requirements via its fisheye hierarchy view.

IA: How does it achieve that?

AHB: DOORS uses an object-oriented technique to organise any number of inter-linked requirements. You can add as many user-defined attributes as you like to each requirement. You can switch instantly between text, outline, and graphical views to see how your requirements relate to each other.

IA: What about other information like pictures and graphs?

AHB: You can insert pictures directly, or you can use OLE to link in image editors or Excel charts or whatever.

IA: How do you handle traceability?

AHB: There is a choice of matrix or back-to-back tree views. As well, you can put in traceability columns to see links to or from other documents.

IA: What happens if requirements change?

AHB: DOORS keeps a full history. You can baseline modules any time. The traceability allows you to see directly the impact of any changes.

IA: What are the unique features of Orion?

Mike Dawe of Machine Reasoning Limited: We do modelling with intelligent objects. We elicit requirements by building a model without a full or clear understanding at first, allowing for conflicting statements. We search for gaps, such as where there are no methods to calculate a result. Orion is new to the RE market, it comes from the world of modelling and machine intelligence.

IA: How does it work?

MD: Its high level language is close to users' knowledge, such as the languages of logic, sets, and algebra. Expressions can be inverted automatically, so if anything is missing it can be found from the rest.

IA: How do you get requirements from users?

MD: Orion is not a database or hierarchy of sets of textual statements. It is at the formal end, but it allows for a range of users with different views or parts of a model. It is fast enough to use interactively to capture ideas, good for inconsistencies, gaps in knowledge. You could import text and use it as hypertext with traceability links to the model.

IA: What are the unique selling points of PC Pack?

Patricia Hughes of Integral Solutions Limited (ISL): Well, it's cheaper! At £1200 per seat, less for academics. PC Pack is a collection of integrated tools, some of them third-party. It is method-centred, using the GDM (Generalised Directive Model) based on the older KADS method. Its home was the knowledge acquisition techniques from the artificial intelligence research of people like Nigel Shadbolt.

IA: What is the software then?

PH: It uses its own editor and a custom-made database. There will be ODBMS and so on. There is a card sorting tool for acquisition and refinement. Our policy is to develop and refine requirements in any tool to suit the specific style and circumstances. As you can see, most of the tools are very visual.

IA: What are the special features of RDD-100?

Brian Hardwick of Ascent Logic: The prime differentiator is RDD's tight integration between a set of requirements and the behavioural model. The system architecture is represented in our own notation but this can be modified, e.g. to DFDs (Dataflow diagrams). The model is executable in the style of a simulation.

IA: How can you look at these models and requirements?

BH: All views are editable. You can filter by components or relationships: you need not see Objects unless you want to. Requirements fit into the framework of system engineering. Text alone is not sufficient for requirements. RDD provides an outliner which indents the requirements according to their depth in the hierarchy.

IA: How can you modify the structure, such as to add an attribute?

BH: You have to save the data and empty the database, exit and view the class hierarchy. Then you load the attribute editor, update the database schema, reload the database and import the data. You can add an enumeration attribute without programming.

IA: What are the key selling points of Requisite Pro?

Alastair Aitken of Rational Software Corporation: It provides the capability to track requirements through the project life-cycle. You can generate use cases and test cases via Rational Rose and the SQA Suite (a Windows GUI testing tool). Export to Rose at low level allows you to create UML (Unified Modeling Language) and ultimately code skeletons. The real benefit is that it gives you the overall picture, to let you actually see coverage of the initial requirements model.

IA: How do you do all that?

AA: The tool is based on Microsoft Word for text editing, and Access for the data. Requisite Pro controls Word and Access, letting you select text in your requirements document for immediate inclusion in the structure. Images and other OLE items are pointed to, outside the structure.

IA: How do you tell if someone has edited an image...?

AA: Requisite Pro checks any changes to things it points to. There are many (hidden text) attributes. A 'Project' keeps track of Word files and so on. You could edit those files just with Word but you'd lose the extra information. Instead, you double-click on a requirement and it opens the Word document. The tool keeps a history of changes.

IA: How do you trace from requirements to models?

AA: With a tree or matrix. The tool checks for circularity at any depth. If there has been any change it marks the links as 'Suspect', a useful feature.

IA: What are the unique selling points of SOMATiK?

Mark Lewis of Bezant Object Technology: It's the strongest requirements capture tool. No object-oriented (OO) analysis at the start! On Day 1 you capture the Mission Statement, from scratch. The tool is for requirements capture, analysis, design, and code generation, for OO in a RAD (Rapid Applications Development) environment.

IA: How do you do all that?

ML: It is like structured word-processing. There is a tabbed user interface ideal for a laptop. You can store the data in a repository and share it over a LAN. Reuse is possible at specification level. There are three models: a context (top-level to identify externals, actors, and messages); a task object model (user-facing); and a class object model (code-facing). You start by not worrying about boundaries, whether the system does something or not. Our unique selling point is that SOMATiK is 'anti-CASE' – it does all the drawing for you!

IA: How do you trace back to requirements?

ML: A rule set captures the semantics of business rules. You can check that the class model is necessary, sufficient, and self-consistent. Metrics such as our task-point metric of complexity are produced automatically.

IA: What are the special features of TMA?

Paul Mellon of Systems Engineering & Assessment (SEA): TMA has a Word front end in a Microsoft Office environment. It is specially tailored for the tender assessment process in the procurement cycle. We have extensive experience of Ministry of Defence requirements, tender assessment and acceptance procedures.

IA: How does the tool work?

PM: There are actually three tools, Tracer, Marker, and Acceptor. We have Tracer on show here today. Tracer is for requirements capture. You edit the source in Word, use Access for analysis, and then issue your documents.

IA: You use database reports to time-stamp them?

PM: Yes, that sort of thing. We link requirements with Word Bookmarks.

IA: What will make people buy the tool?

PM: Ease of use, familiar interfaces. It is a simple tool, you can learn it in one day. It is well tailored to tender assessment and acceptance, especially in a defence environment.

IA: How are you finding the exhibition and events today?

Claire Clayton: Well the timetable is a bit difficult! I enjoyed the tutorial on training. I used to be in process improvement and came along today for help on requirements engineering and its relation to process modelling. It's interesting but I'd need more time to see everything.