Centre for Software Reliability

DeVa (Design for Validation)

ESPRIT Long Term Research Project 20072. January 1996 - January 1999.

Funding to CSR, City University: 277,000 ECU.
Summary: Examining issues of software structuring to aid the design for validation of real-time distributed systems with respect to dependability requirements.
Objectives:
  • To make a major contribution to the problems of validating computing systems
  • To provide an effective "design for validation" paradigm.
Approach:
  • Investigations into methods for combining disparate sources of information for dependability evaluation
  • Development of software safety cases using Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN)
  • Demonstrations of understandability, verifiability and evaluability in design
  • Advanced object-oriented design techniques deal with logical complexity and dependability issues for investigating understandability.
  • Investigations into fault-tolerance and component re-use using techniques such as reflection and delegation.
  • Disciplined approaches ensuring the testability of design.
Results: The production of a set of design guidelines and assessment techniques to simplify and support the validation and certification of dependable systems.
 
Partners: DRA (UK), LAAS-CNRS (France), LGL-DI-EPFL(Switzerland), University of Newcastle upon Tyne(UK), Universitat Ulm (Germany), University of York (UK).
 
CSR Personnel: Professor Littlewood, Professor Fenton, Professor Strigini, Mr. Wright

 

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