One of the primary challenges with the Application Lifecycle Management
(ALM) components interoperability is the lack of a common meta-model.
Even though there is an ?application? context that is somewhat understood
in the lifecycle, there is no structured common definition representing
the application model and transformation applied against that model from
its inception to eventual fulfillment. ALMIIF is going to work with all
interested parties in the ALM community to define a standards-based common
vocabulary and taxonomy describing the ?content? of the application
throughout the lifecycle.
Today, the QA tool will call the API specific to the business
modeling/requirement tool to get the ?logical? definition of the model so
that it can auto-generate the associated test scripts. The same QA tool
has to invoke another method for a different business modeling/requirement
tool to accomplish the same task. Given the myriad of products, tools,
and services that are typically integrated to manage an application change
from its inception to fulfillment, the number of endpoints and the
necessary point-to-point integrations inevitably grows. Once a common
vocabulary exists, the QA tool can integrate against the common definition
once and be able to interoperate with all the tools that publish their
data against that meta-model and as such be completely agnostic to
individual tools? versions and corresponding APIs.