Introduction

Requirements Engineering (RE), which is commonly viewed as  exploration of the problem domain, is crucial to the software engineering task, whilst Software Architecture (SA), which is often seen as the entry to the solution space is equally important.  One of the goals of the SABRE consortium is to develop sound methodologies that promote synergy between these two activities.   Unfortunately although RE and SA are closely related and should complement each other they are often not treated in an integrated or systematic manner  resulting in principles and techniques that may not be fully applicable to the software industry.

In concrete terms SABRE reveals itself as a set of varied activities such as Function-Class Decomposition, which provides a hybrid approach to decomposing large and complex systems, and Event-Based Traceability, which provides robust requirements traceability despite ongoing evolutionary change and supports impact analysis of both functional and non-functional attributes.  A full listing of current SABRE projects is available.