FORMAL SOFTWARE INSPECTIONS: AN INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION OF FUNCTION TABLES AND EVENT-B TO SOFTWARE OF A WAYSIDE TRAIN MONITORING SYSTEM

• Published in: WIT Transactions on the Built Environment Vol. 199; p. 293
• Main Author: Eschbach, Robert
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Southampton W I T Press 01.01.2020
• Subjects: Computer program integrity; Computer programs; Configuration management; Data management; Industrial applications; Inspection; Inspections; Monitoring; Monitoring systems; Safety critical; Software; Subsystems
• ISSN: 1746-4498; 1743-3509
• DOI: 10.2495/CR200271

The experience gained in the industrial application of software inspections using Function Tables and Event-B to a subsystem of a Wayside Train Monitoring system (WTMS) is presented in this paper. The WTMS Configuration Management System (CMS) supports the creation and management of configuration data for the WTMS. The correct and reliable implementation of the required system functions, especially those dealing with data handling and data management, is of particular importance for the overall quality of the system since faults in these functions may lead to critical failures and malfunctioning. Therefore, the development of the data handling part of a CMS requires the use of high integrity methods like systematic software inspections in order to ensure the highest quality. Function Tables have been successfully applied for the inspection of safety-critical software. In our industrial project, a special variant of Function Tables was defined that can be easily mapped to formal Event-B specifications. Event-B with its set-theoretic basis for modeling, its concept of refinement and the use of formal proof to ensure correctness of refinement steps, is used to formally analyze the derived Function Tables. The systematic derivation of Function Tables is done by a verification-based inspection using reading technique “stepwise abstraction”.