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Variability management in safety‐critical systems design and dependability analysis
Author(s) -
Oliveira André Luiz,
Braga Rosana,
Masiero Paulo,
Parker David,
Papadopoulos Yiannis,
Habli Ibrahim,
Kelly Tim
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of software: evolution and process
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 2047-7481
pISSN - 2047-7473
DOI - 10.1002/smr.2202
Subject(s) - dependability , reuse , life critical system , hazard analysis , reliability engineering , fault tree analysis , component (thermodynamics) , system safety , risk analysis (engineering) , systems engineering , computer science , context (archaeology) , domain analysis , hazard , domain engineering , process (computing) , safety engineering , engineering , software , software system , component based software engineering , software construction , medicine , paleontology , chemistry , physics , operating system , organic chemistry , biology , thermodynamics , programming language , waste management
Safety‐critical systems are of paramount importance for many application domains, where safety properties are a key driver to engineer critical aspects and avoid system failures. For the benefits of large‐scale reuse, software product lines (SPL) have been adopted in critical systems industry. However, the integration of safety analysis in the SPL development process is nontrivial. Also, the different usage contexts of safety‐critical systems complicates component fault modeling tasks and the identification of potential hazards. In this light, better methods become necessary to estimate the impact of dependability properties during Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment. Existing methods incorporating the analysis of safety properties in SPL are limited as they do not include hazard analysis and component fault modeling. In this paper, we present the novel DEPendable Software Product Line Engineering (DEPendable‐SPLE) approach, which extends traditional SPL processes to support the reuse of safety assets. We also present a detailed analysis of the impact of product and context features on the SPL design, safety analysis, and safety requirements. We applied DEPendable‐SPLE to a realistic case study from the aerospace domain to illustrate how to model and reuse safety properties. DEPendable‐SPLE reduced the effort of safety analysis for certifying system variants.