Rigorous engineering of product-line requirements: A case study in failure management

Abstract

We consider the failure detection and management function for engine control systems as an application domain where product line engineering is indicated. The need to develop a generic requirement set -for subsequent system instantiation -is complicated by the addition of the high levels of verification demanded by this safety-critical domain, subject to avionics industry standards. We present our case study experience in this area as a candidate method for the engineering, validation and verification of generic requirements using domain engineering and Formal Methods techniques and tools. For a defined class of systems, the case study produces a generic requirement set in UML and an example system instance. Domain analysis and engineering produce a validated model which is integrated with the formal specification/ verification method B by the use of our UML-B profile. The formal verification both of the generic requirement set, and of a simple system instance, is demonstrated using our U2B, ProB and prototype Requirements Manager tools. This work is a demonstrator for a tool-supported method which will be an output of EU project RODIN 1 . The use of existing and prototype formal verification and support tools is discussed. The method, developed in application to this novel combination of product line, failure management and safety-critical engineering, is evaluated and considered to be applicable to a wide range of domains.

Composing Event-B Specifications - Case-Study Experience

“…This paper focuses on the application of our feature modelling and composition methodologies to the case-study work. This work builds on the methodology of Snook et al [6] for the formal verification of product lines. We want to explore how their methodology can be developed by experimenting with the case-studies using Event-B and suggesting further research.…”

UML-B: A Plug-in for the Event-B Tool Set

“…UML-B has been used to model a failure management system (FMS) [6]. The FMS is a wrapper layer that detects and filters out transient failures in sensors and transducers.…”