Managing system design requirements information

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Security Technology Department provides program support to design security systems and related improvements. During one of these projects, a relational database system was developed to categorize and to help cross match the requirements from several documents. A "design requirements" matrix was created that shows the requirements met by the improved security system. The system is flexible and easy-to-use. Even though it is only a prototype, the application's forms, queries, reports and the requirements data could be reused by other projects. The strengths of the system are the ability to use text searches of the database to aid in the categorization and customized reporting of the information from the requirements documents. A document's metadata (e.g., name, chapter, section, paragraph, etc.) is stored with the related text in the database. The security classification and other information associated with a paragraph are included. User defined "requirement categories" (e.g., alarms, barriers, fences, standoff) can be assigned to appropriate paragraphs from the requirements document. Relevant design document paragraphs can be matched with the "requirement categories". Selected lines can be included or excluded from the reports. The resulting customized reports can be reported or exported as Excel or rich text format files where additional formatting may be applied.