International Workshop on Software Reuse and Safety

Standards

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There are a number of software safety-related standards, adopted by various communities.

U.S. DoD

To be completed.

European Space Agency

The European Space Agency has a set of standards known as the European Cooperation for Space Standardisation series. Two of these standards are of particular interest in the context of software reuse and safety: Q-80 on Software Product Assurance, and E-40 on Software Engineering. A companion to Q-80 entitled Guidelines for the Reuse of Pre-developed Software has been written. See here for more information on E-40 and Q-80.

CENELEC

The European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization, CENELEC, has produced a number of standards that address the functional safety of railway applications. The 50128 standard addresses software. Giovanni Sartori of Intecs SpA reports that, for example, in Section 9.4.4 the reuse of pre-existing software is taken into consideration. Section 9.4.5 deals with the use of COTS.

In his article A critical look at the CENELEC Railway Application Standards, O. Nordland discusses the problem of how CENELEC is oriented primarily to the development of new systems, whereas reuse "in the large" of legacy software is not yet completely addressed.

U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

The FAA has established the standard DO-178B for software development. Of particular interest in the context of software reuse and safety is the Advisory Circular AC20-115 which recognizes DO-178B as the accepted means of certifying all new aviation software, and established the concept of the Reusable Software Component (RSC). The Advisory Circular AC 20-148 on Reusable Software Components provides guidelines for obtaining FAA acceptance of an RSC.

Automotive Industry

The automotive industry is currently waiting for the issue of the standard WD2626-2, which will deal with the qualification of software libraries. Component reuse in the automotive industry is particularly important because costs are a significant factor in the production of software in the automotive industry.