Trace links between requirements and software artifacts provide available traceability information and in-depth insights for different stakeholders. Unfortunately, establishing requirements trace links is a tedious, labor-intensive and fallible task. To alleviate this problem, Information Retrieval (IR) methods, such as Vector Space Model (VSM), Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), and their variants, have been widely used to establish trace links automatically. But with the widespread use of agile development methodology, artifacts that can be used to generate automatic tracing links are getting shorter and shorter, which decreases the effects of traditional IR-based trace link generation methods. In this paper, Biterm Topic Model–Genetic Algorithm (BTM–GA), which is effective in managing short-text artifacts and configuring initial parameters, is introduced. A hybrid method VSM[Formula: see text]BTM–GA is proposed to generate requirements trace links. Empirical experiments conducted on five real and frequently-used datasets indicate that (1) the hybrid method VSM+BTM[Formula: see text]GA outperforms the others, and its results can achieve the “Good” level, where recall and precision are no less than 70% and 30%, respectively; (2) the performance of the hybrid method is stable and (3) BTM–GA can provide a number of “hard-to-find” trace links that complement the candidate trace links of VSM.

中文翻译：

---

用于生成需求跟踪链接的自动混合方法

需求和软件工件之间的跟踪链接为不同的利益相关者提供了可用的可追溯性信息和深入的见解。不幸的是，建立需求跟踪链接是一项乏味、劳动密集且容易出错的任务。为了缓解这个问题，信息检索（IR）方法，如向量空间模型（VSM）、潜在语义索引（LSI）及其变体，已被广泛用于自动建立跟踪链接。但是随着敏捷开发方法的广泛使用，可用于生成自动跟踪链接的工件越来越短，这降低了传统的基于 IR 的跟踪链接生成方法的效果。在本文中，有效管理短文本工件和配置初始参数的 Biterm 主题模型-遗传算法 (BTM-GA)，介绍。提出了一种混合方法VSM[公式：见正文]BTM-GA来生成需求跟踪链接。在五个真实常用的数据集上进行的实证实验表明：（1）混合方法VSM+BTM[公式：见正文]GA优于其他方法，其结果可以达到“Good”水平，召回率和准确率都没有。分别低于 70% 和 30%；(2) 混合方法的性能稳定； (3) BTM-GA 可以提供许多“难以找到”的跟踪链接，以补充 VSM 的候选跟踪链接。其结果可以达到“Good”水平，召回率和准确率分别不低于70%和30%；(2) 混合方法的性能稳定； (3) BTM-GA 可以提供许多“难以找到”的跟踪链接，以补充 VSM 的候选跟踪链接。其结果可以达到“Good”水平，召回率和准确率分别不低于70%和30%；(2) 混合方法的性能稳定； (3) BTM-GA 可以提供许多“难以找到”的跟踪链接，以补充 VSM 的候选跟踪链接。