NASA Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports

industrial tools, and increased interest in correlating the threat space with the VV&C techniques to be used. Specifically, the
Task Group recommends to NATO that it give serious consideration to the use of goalbased approaches to the certification of
systems; that when performing VV&C of ‘critical components’ the VV&C be performed and/or assessed by an independent
third party; consider whether such parties should be accredited; that objective guidance be provided for required V&V
artifacts; that maximum freedom of IT processes and techniques be provided within the scope of the VV&C framework; and
that the certification effort reflect the criticality of the system. For highly critical systems, it is recommended that NATO insert
formal modeling and reasoning into their development processes, insert advanced static analysis techniques, and apply
extensive testing.
Author
Embedding; Certification; Correlation; Predictions; Software Engineering
20060000050 Research and Technology Organization, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Verification and Validation: Current and Best Practice
Juristo, Natalia; Validation, Verification and Certification of Embedded Systems; October 2005, pp. 1-14; In English; See also
20060000049; Copyright; Avail.: CASI: A03, Hardcopy; Available from CASI on CD-ROM only as part of the entire
parent document
There are numerous definitions of verification and validation. We present two well-known definitions: An IEEE standard
definition and one given by Barry Boehm, an old but very important definition within the software engineering community.
According to IEEE, Verification can mean the: 1) Act of reviewing, inspecting, testing, checking, auditing, or otherwise
establishing and documenting; whether items, processes, services or documents conform to specified requirements; 2) Process
of determining whether the products of a given phase of the software development life cycle fulfill the requirements
established during the previous phase; and; 3) Formal proof of program correctness. Validation is defined as the evaluation
of software at the end of the software development process to ensure compliance with the user requirements. Validation is,
therefore, ‘end-to-end’ verification. According to Boehm: a) Verification. Am I building the system right? b) Validation. Am
I building the right system? In the definition for validation, note that it aims to compare a system with its requirements.
Therefore, it has to do not only with quality attributes, such as functionality and reliability, but also includes non-functional
requirements.
Derived from text
Computer Programming; Software Engineering; User Requirements; Computer Programs; Functional Design Specifications;
Proving
20060000055 Adelard, LLP, London, UK
Certification
Bloomfield, Robin; Voas, Jeffrey; Validation, Verification and Certification of Embedded Systems; October 2005, pp. 6-1 -
6.5; In English; See also 20060000049; Copyright; Avail.: CASI: A01, Hardcopy; Available from CASI on CD-ROM only
as part of the entire parent document
Software certification is simply the process of generating a certificate that supports the claim that the software was either:
(1) developed in a certain manner, (2) will exhibit some set of desirable run-time characteristics, or (3) has some other static
characteristic embedded into it. For example, the certificate could simply state that a particular type of testing was applied and
to what degree or thoroughness; or the certificate could state that the software can be composed successfully with any other
software component with a certain set of predefined characteristics. Certification may be an attempt to transfer the risk to the
certifier, but in many safety situations the user of the system still remains responsible for the safety. Two key questions are
‘who does the certification?’ and ‘what is being certified?’ Turning first to the question of who performs the certification. The
process of creating a certificate is typically performed by one of three parties: by the vendor of the software, by a client of
the software, or by an independent third party that is performing the service independent of the vendor or users. Numerous
examples of third party certification occur in industries such as electronics (e.g., Underwriters Laboratory), aviation (through
designated engineering representatives), and consumer products (e.g., Consumer Reports). In industrial applications, the TUVs
(see Page E-1) dominate the market for the assessment of programmable controllers used in the process industry and are active
in railways and nuclear assessments. There are also wide ranges of certification activities that support interoperability. For
example, The Open Group certifies that Linux implementations are indeed Linux and that X-windows conform to their
standards. Other examples are protocol testing by telecom laboratories and compiler testing to demonstrate conformance with
a language definition. The rather misnamed ‘Ada validation suite’ tests for functional aspects of the compiler not all the
required attributes such as reliability. It is important to be clear by what is meant by the different kinds of certificates. To begin,
these certificates are typically done as a follow-up check to insure that certain processes were followed during development;
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