Experience report

Abstract

High-level tools have become unavoidable in industrial software development processes. Safety-critical embedded programs don't escape this trend. In the context of safety-critical embedded systems, the development processes follow strict guidelines and requirements. The development quality assurance applies as much to the final embedded code, as to the tools themselves. The French company Esterel Technologies decided in 2006 to base its new SCADE SUITE 6 TM certifiable code generator on Objective Caml. This paper outlines how it has been challenging in the context of safety critical software development by the rigorous norms DO-178B, IEC 61508, EN 50128 and such.

A Scade Suite to Modelica Interface

“…It also enables circumvention of cumbersome activities demanded by today's critical software standards such as DO-178B, EN50128 or IEC61508 (see [5] and [6]). The qualification and certification of the Scade KCG code generator demands that the produced code is not altered in any way.…”