Electrical, Computer, Software, and System Engineering

This paper reviews some results in improving software safety in computer control systems. The discussion covers various aspects of the software development process, as opposed to the product features. Software diversity, off-the-shelf software, failure mode and effect analysis, rigorous and formal software development are discussed.

This paper discusses ideas and techniques for integrating software engineering concepts and practices into an undergraduate computer science curriculum. Discussion is focused on concepts that are related to the following aspects of software engineering: the need for software engineering, characteristics of good software, the software development process, estimation and planning, working in teams, specification of requirements, software design, and software quality issues. The computer science curriculum at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is used as an illustrative example of how these concepts can be integrated into an undergraduate computer science program, from introductory computer science courses to a senior project course. The paper starts with a description of the current state of software engineering education. After a discussion of Emory-Riddle's computer science curriculum structure, the authors propose a set of software engineering concepts that should be included in an undergraduate program. Finally, guidelines for incorporating these concepts into a computer science curriculum are presented, and there is a discussion of the benefits of the integrated approach: the relevance of the curriculum to software engineering practices, the experience that students gain through collaboration and teamwork, and the satisfaction that employers show with graduates of such a program.

Rapid progress of computing technologies is the major reason that the programs like electronics, computer and software engineering, robotics and control engineering need continuous updates. This paper is related to the development of an international curriculum in real-time software engineering. It focuses on identification of skills, attitude and knowledge the students need to acquire to become efficient engineers working in the field. To facilitate this objective, a survey administered to industry representatives in four countries is described and its results are discussed.

This paper addresses the problem of educating software engineering professionals who can efficiently and effectively develop real-time software intensive control systems in the global community. A framework for developing curricula that support such education is presented. The curriculum framework is based on the work of two education projects: the ILERT (international learning environment for real-time software intensive control system) project, and the software engineering efforts of the ACM/IEEE-CS joint task force on computing curricula. The authors describe a curriculum framework that integrates principles, content, and organization from the two projects, and which satisfies the intent and requirement of both projects.

This paper presents an overview and discusses the role of certification in safety-critical computer systems focusing on software, and partially hardware, used in the civil aviation domain. It discusses certification activities according to RTCA DO-178B “Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification” and touches on tool qualification according to RTCA DO-254 “Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware.” Specifically, certification issues as related to real-time operating systems and programming languages are reviewed, as well as software development tools and complex electronic hardware tool qualification processes are discussed. Results of an independent industry survey done by the authors are also presented.

The paper presents taxonomy of criteria and procedures for evaluating software development tools used in safety-critical real-time systems. The ultimate purpose of the research is to provide a base for creation of guidelines for the tool certification process. The specific application area is airborne software and appropriate references are made to the accepted RTCA DO-178B guidelines. The software design and coding processes are focal point of tool assessment. The paper presents the industry viewpoint, tool qualification and evaluation criteria, and an active experiment serving as a test-bed for collecting software development effort data and engineering observations supporting the tool assessment methodology.

The paper presents selected experimental results of evaluating six real-time software development tools for use in safety-critical systems. The experiments were designed to collect data, such as project effort, code size, functionality, traceability, etc., in four stages: preparation, model/code development, measurements, and postmortem. Preliminary experiments were conducted to enable fully controlled experiments for the development of well defined but simple