Criticality Analysis for COTS Software Components

Understanding the impact of the failure of a COTS software component with respect to key system properties (e.g. safety) is crucial to the successful use of COTS software products in a critical (safety-, security-, or mission-critical) application. In this paper, we describe a criticality analysis method based upon software architecture to assess the failure impact of potential COTS software components with respect to system safety. The results of applying this method can be used to facilitate the evaluation of the feasibility of a COTS-based safety-critical system development solution, the establishment of COTS component selection criteria for a safety-critical application, and the justification of the use of COTS software components in a safety-critical application.