A Model-driven Dependability Analysis Method for Component-based Architectures

Critical distributed real-time embedded component-based systems must be dependable and thus be able to avoid unacceptable failures. To efficiently evaluate the dependability of the assembly obtained by selecting and composing components, well-integrated and tool-supported techniques are needed. Currently, no satisfying tool-supported technique fully integrated in the development life-cycle exists. To overcome this limitation, we propose CHESS-FLA, which is a model-driven failure logic analysis method. CHESS-FLA allows designers to: model the nominal as well as the failure behaviour of their architectures; automatically perform dependability analysis through a model transformation; and, finally, ease the interpretation of the analysis results through back-propagation onto the original architectural model. CHESS-FLA is part of an industrial quality tool-set for the functional and extra-functional development of high integrity embedded component-based systems, developed within the EU-ARTEMIS funded CHESS project. Finally, we present a case study taken from the telecommunication domain to illustrate and assess the proposed method.