SACM2 — Scope of availability of change management information

Timing or change management information needs to be able to be associated with anything as anything can change over time. This includes for example with Attributes (and any Properties). In addition, how to best handle changes and change information over time needs to be reviewed throughout SACM.

The version and change management related information ­ although often kept in a CM system ­ needs to be exchangeable along with an assurance case. At least one exchange standard for CM information exists, TECHAMERICA EIA-836B: Configuration Management Data Exchange and Interoperability, publication date: Mar 1, 2010. It is reportedly both ANSI and DoD approved. (http://engineers.ihs.com/document/abstract/BMVKACAAAAAAAAAA) One option is for this to be appropriately included by reference.

Versioning should be available for everything. Identification and “HasVersion” attribute should be associated with a near root element, or this availability should be achieved in some other fashion. The standard should not restrict its availability and smallness of possible granularity of elements it may be applied to.

This level of fine grained versioning is outside the scope of SACM.

Versioning has been maintained as an attribute for the Artefact class, because in SACM’s management of evidence we are responsible for ensuring the complete and correct management of the artefact inventory. However, versioning of all of the other model elements lies outside the scope of the exchange model.

Comment – there must be other fine-grained model management / versioning standards) Versioning information could be added to every model element (if required) using TaggedValue (which could use a community consensus vocabulary established using the Terminology package). However, because there are many ways to maintain version information, we decided to not standardize this.