Abstract
[First paragraph] Safety-critical systems, such as those in the avionics, automotive,
power, space, and medical industries, are predominantly driven
by real-time embedded software and are often referred to as highintegrity
real-time systems (HIRTS). In these systems, safety is of
paramount importance. Safety is broadly defined as freedom from accidents
and loss.1 When no safe alternative to normal service exists, a system must be
dependable to be safe—that is, it must have reliable ways to deliver a certain quality of service. Dependability is thus concerned
primarily with fault tolerance. Dependability
attributes (availability, reliability,
safety, confidentiality, integrity, and maintainability)
are highly desirable in many other categories
of modern software systems. For example,
a Web service’s availability is highly
desirable from a business perspective. However,
it isn’t critical in the same sense as the
availability of an aircraft’s landing gear. Likewise,
we want our banking system to be reliable,
but not in the same way that we want
our car to be reliable at high speeds.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 71-79 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | IEEE Software |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2006 |