Abstract
Companies are increasingly adopting a product-line approach to the development of safety-critical systems. A product line offers large-scale reuse by exploiting common features and assets shared by systems within a specific domain. In this paper, we discuss the challenges of justifying the safety of architectural configurations and variation when developing product-line safety cases. We then address these challenges by defining an approach to developing product-line safety cases using the patterns and modular extensions of the Goal Structuring Notation (GSN). In this approach, we use the GSN patterns extension for explicitly capturing safety case variations and tracing these variations to their extrinsic source in the architectural model. Further, we use the GSN modular extension to organise the safety case into core and variable argument modules which are loosely coupled by means of argument contracts. We demonstrate this approach in a case study based on a product line of aero-engine control systems.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Clements, P., Northrop, L.: Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns. Addison-Wesley, Reading (2001)
Weiss, D.M., Robert, C.T.: Product-Line Engineering: A Family-Based Software Development Process. Addison-Wesley Professional, Reading (1999)
Kelly, T.P.: Arguing Safety – A Systematic Approach to Safety Case Management. DPhil Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of York, UK (1998)
Bate, I.J., Kelly, T.P.: Architectural Considerations in the Certification of Modular Systems. In: Anderson, S., Bologna, S., Felici, M. (eds.) SAFECOMP 2002. LNCS, vol. 2434, p. 321. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Industrial Avionics Working Group (IAWG): Modular Software Safety Case Process – Part A: Process Definition (October 2007), http://www.assconline.co.uk/
Attwood, K., Kelly, T.P., McDermid, J.A.: The Use of Satisfaction Arguments for Traceability in Requirements Reuse for System Families. In: International Workshop on Requirements Reuse in System Family Engineering (2004)
Fenn, J., Hawkins, R., Kelly, T.P., Williams, P.: Safety Case Composition Using Contracts – Refinements Based on Feedback from an Industrial Case Study. In: 15th Safety Critical Systems Symposium (2007)
Dowding, M.: Maintenance of the Certification Basis for a Distributed Control System – Developing a Safety Case Architecture. MSc Report, Department of Computer Science, University of York, UK (2002)
Alexander, C.: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. OUP, USA (1978)
Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., Vlissides, J.: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1995)
Object Management Group (OMG): Systems Modelling Language. vol. 1.1, OMG (2008)
EUROCAE/RTCA: ED-12B/DO-178B: Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification. EUROCAE/RTCA (1994)
UK Ministry of Defence (MoD): 00-55 Requirements of Safety Related Software in Defence Equipment. Part 2: Guidance, Issue 2, Defence Standard, UK Ministry of Defence (1997)
International Organization for Standardization (ISO): ISO26262 Road vehicles – Functional safety. Draft, Baseline 15 (2009)
Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE): Aerospace Recommended Practice 4754: Certification Considerations for Highly-Integrated or Complex Aircraft Systems. SAE (November 1996)
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): AC 20-148: Reusable Software Components (December 2004)
Dehlinger, J., Lutz, R.: PLFaultCAT: A Product-Line Software Fault Tree Analysis Tool. Automated Software Engineering 13(1), 169–193 (2006)
Feng, Q., Lutz, R.: Bi-Directional Safety Analysis of Product Lines. Journal of Systems and Software 78(2), 111–127 (2005)
Dehlinger, J., Lutz, R.: Software Fault Tree Analysis for Product Lines. In: 8th IEEE International Symposium on High Assurance Systems Engineering (HASE 2004), Florida, USA (2004)
Dehlinger, J., Lutz, R.: Fault Contribution Trees for Product Families. In: 13th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (2002)
Dehlinger, J., Humphrey, M., Suvorov, L., Padmanabahn, P., Lutz, R.: Decimal and PLFaultCAT: From Product-Line Requirements to Product-Line Member Software Fault Trees, Research Demonstration. In: 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2007), Minneapolis (2007)
Liu, J., Dehlinger, J., Lutz, R.: Safety Analysis of Software Product Lines Using State-Based Modeling. Journal of Systems and Software 80(11), 1879–1892 (2007)
Stephenson, Z.R., de Souza, S., McDermid, J.A.: Product Line Analysis and the System Safety Process. In: 22nd International System Safety Conference (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Habli, I., Kelly, T. (2010). A Safety Case Approach to Assuring Configurable Architectures of Safety-Critical Product Lines. In: Giese, H. (eds) Architecting Critical Systems. ISARCS 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6150. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13556-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13556-9_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-13555-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-13556-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)