An Approach towards Reusability in Hybrid Avionic Software Development by Using a Unified Graph Representation of the Software System

Abstract

Reusability of software is seen as a possibility to reduce the cost for new avionic products. More and more avionic software projects make use of a hybrid approach where model-driven and traditional software development methods are used in the same project. From certification point of view the resulting software system is seen as a single system regardless of the development methodology. This paper focuses on the “process artefacts” that describe the various elements created during the software development process and the trace links that provide a logical connection between the process artefacts. The use of a graph database is a new approach for evaluating the process artefacts as nodes and the trace links as edges. The resulting unified graph is used for analysis purposes and for identifying subgraphs that embody possible reusable software components throughout the hybrid software project. The knowledge of the nodes contained in the subgraph, which are equivalent to process artefacts, makes the export of a software component from the graph possible. The software component is documented and can be added to a software component repository with all its process artefacts from traditional and model-driven software development and its bidirectional trace links. This way, projects that can make use of one or more software components that already exist, can integrate those into the software development process with all the available process artefacts from past development and therefore increase reusability in software development.