Popular industry terms frequently lose their exact definitions over time. Specific, niche technical concepts are often hijacked or coined by software providers to fit their own use cases, creating widespread confusion. Our new ‘frequently asked questions’ blog series tackles these issues. We spoke to our experts and addressed common misunderstandings to provide clear, actionable insights.

In this blog, we will clarify the critical relationships between digital libraries and applications. Both within the context of Systems Engineering. 

Catch up on part one and two of this series! The last part of this blog series will be shared next month. Make sure you keep an eye on our LinkedIn when we share it!

How do digital libraries relate to applications?

Requirements libraries and reusable system divisions are established concepts. Many widely used applications supporting Systems Engineering can manage and deploy requirements libraries within their own application. However, this approach has a drawback because the applications define how the software interacts with the requirements library.

Library owners prefer to separate data from applications for several reasons:

• It allows flexibility in choosing an application lifecycle management tool. This prevents vendor lock-in and thus excessive software costs.
• Different teams within the same organization often use different applications.
• Library owners use different configurations of the same software for background information.
• Requirements libraries are often shared with external organizations that use unknown or uncontrolled applications, which is common in standards-based environments.

To enable the reuse of libraries in any application, the library must be stored in a neutral format and be applicable via general agreements. Therefore, Open Standards for the format and protocols are used for digital libraries.

Our teams are trained in configuring various Systems Engineering tools to your specifications, tailored to the organization’s processes, and equipped with a plug-in for data exchange in an Open Standard. If you’d like to know how, contact us with more information here.

In Summary

Digital libraries and applications work best when kept separate. The application used to manage a requirements library should not determine how that library is structured or accessed, since this allows the library to remain reusable across different tools, organizations, and standards.

Here are the key takeaways!

• A (requirements) library should be reusable across different applications, instead of being tied to the Systems Engineering tool that manages it.
• Library owners separate data from applications to avoid vendor lock-in, support multiple internal applications, and accommodate different software configurations.
• Sharing requirements libraries with external organizations requires a neutral format, since those organizations use applications that the owner cannot control or predict.

Come back next time, where we will close off this series by answering: ‘Why should Systems Engineering applications be integrated’.

For more information, reach out to us here!