Software Architecture Safety Compliance Through Automated Failure Mitigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Evaluating complex software architectures for compliance with safety requirements is challenging due to the absence of design documents and the complexity of interrelationships among software elements, making manual analysis time-consuming and error-prone.
Innovation Solution
An automated evaluation system determines failure modes and adjusts compile-time and runtime parameters to apply architectural mitigations, reducing the impact of these modes and ensuring compliance with safety requirements.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If manual evaluation is used to assess software architecture compliance with safety requirements, then evaluation accuracy can be maintained, but evaluation time and labor requirements increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces manual mechanical evaluation processes with an automated computer-based system that uses static analysis tools to evaluate software architecture compliance. The system automatically parses design documents, extracts architectural elements, and checks them against safety requirements without human intervention, thereby reducing evaluation time while maintaining accuracy through systematic algorithmic processing.
Solution Approach 2:
The evaluation system performs self-service by automatically analyzing its own output and generating comprehensive evaluation reports without requiring manual review. The system self-validates compliance findings, self-adjusts to different safety standard formats, and self-generates actionable recommendations, eliminating the need for manual verification and significantly reducing overall evaluation time.
2Reliability
If manual analysis is performed to evaluate software architecture, then detailed compliance checking is possible, but the process becomes error-prone and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The system incorporates feedback mechanisms that continuously validate compliance findings against the original safety requirements and design documents. The automated system cross-checks its findings, provides real-time validation of compliance status, and generates feedback reports that highlight potential issues or inconsistencies, thereby improving reliability while maintaining high evaluation efficiency through automated verification loops.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces error-prone manual analysis with automated computer-based compliance checking that uses systematic algorithms and structured parsing techniques. The system automatically extracts architectural elements from design documents, maps them to safety requirement criteria, and performs consistent compliance checking without human error, thereby improving both reliability and productivity simultaneously.
3Adaptability or versatility
If design documents are absent or incomplete, then development flexibility is maintained, but evaluation of software architecture compliance becomes difficult or impossible
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically generating required design document sections or extracting necessary architectural information from existing codebases before compliance evaluation begins. The system can create placeholder documents, generate architecture diagrams, or extract relevant elements from source code when design documents are absent or incomplete, thereby enabling compliance evaluation without requiring perfect documentation while maintaining development flexibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer that acts as a mediator between the software architecture and safety requirements. This intermediary system can infer architectural elements from code, generate virtual design documents, or create bridging mappings between existing documentation and compliance criteria, thereby enabling compliance evaluation even when design documents are absent or incomplete while preserving development flexibility.
Data Source
AI summary
A target software architecture can be automatically evaluated for compliance with safety requirements. For example, a system can receive safety requirement data indicating an allocation of safety requirements to an external input interface of a target software architecture. The system can determine at least one failure mode associated with the external input interface. The system can determine adjusted compile-time parameters and adjusted runtime parameters based on the at least one failure mode. The system can determine at least one architectural mitigation based on the at least one failure mode, the at least one architectural mitigation being configured to reduce an effect of the at least one failure mode. The system can then apply the at least one architectural mitigation to the external input interface.