Model Based Specification

Creating specification documents is only one side off the coin. The other side requires documents to remain up-to-date and changes to requirements and design to be incorporated. As a matter of fact, changes to requirements are a basic ingredient to almost any project.

DSPECIALISTS developed a method of model based specification document generation to better support frequent specification changes and to be able to handle large amounts of dependencies. That technique has been presented and discussed at the Embedded World Conference 2016 in Nuremberg. Creating or updating a specification involves a two-step process:

  1. Creating or modifying specification objects using UML in Enterprise Architect
  2. Generating specification documents using EALatex.

EA2Latex is an extension module for Enterprise Architect developed by DSPECIALISTS and was originally intended for in-house use, only. It generates LaTeX documents from the UML model and uses custom templates to create PDF documents. Using EA2Latex the entire workflow of document management and versioning can be integrated and reduced to create ready to release documents with a few clicks within Enterprise Architect.

As an extended support to our specification customers and as the result of the broad interest which has been shown towards EA2Latex at the Embedded World Conference, DSPECIALISTS released EA2Latex as free software on Github in April, 2016. In doing so, DSPECIALISTS also aims for a more in-depth collaboration with third party users to be able to provide continuous improvements and long-term support for EA2Latex.