Tool Integration and Safety : A Foundation for Analysing the Impact of Tool Integrationon Non-functional Properties

Sammanfattning: The increasing complexity of embedded systems development is becoming difficult to handle with development environments based on disjoint engineering tools. Support for interactions between various engineering tools, especially through automated means, has therefore received an increased amount of attention during the last few years. The subsequent increase in the amount of tool integration is leading to an increased impact of tool integration on non-functional properties of development efforts, development environments and end products. At the same time there is a lack of methods and tools for analysing the relationship between these properties and tool integration. To establish a foundation for analysing this generic relationship, the specific relationship between tool integration and the safety of end products is analysed in this thesis.A survey was conducted to analyze the State of the Art of tool integration as related to safety. This survey specifically identified the lack of an efficient handling of tool integration by modern safety standards as an important concern. In relation to this survey, three theories were identified as of specific importance. These are the school of thought known as Systems Thinking, the Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) causality model and the System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) hazard analysis technique.Building on these theories, this thesis provides original contributions intended to (1) describe concepts and models related to tool integration and safety (the first and second contribution), (2) link tool integration to safety in a way that reduces complexity during analysis (the third contribution) and (3) propose how to interpret and make use of the implications of the presented theories and the first three contributions (the fourth and fifth contribution).• The first contribution is a new conceptual model of a development effort that emphasizes tool integration.• The second contribution is a new reference model for tool integration in highly heterogeneous environments.• The third contribution consists of nine safety-related tool chain properties, i.e. properties of tool chains that could mitigate at least part of the risks introduced by tool integration.• The fourth contribution is a proposition on how to identify safety implications due to a high level of automation of tool integration.• The fifth contribution is a proposition for a new software tool qualification process.