Jun 17
2013
By Kevin Fall
Chief Technology Officer
I
recently joined the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute
(SEI) as deputy director and chief technology officer (CTO). My goal in
this new role is to help the SEI advance computer science, software
engineering, cybersecurity, and related disciplines to help ensure that the
acquisition, development, and operation of software-dependent systems
have lower cost, higher quality, and better security. I have spent the
past two decades conducting a range of research and development
activities, and I have served on various Department of Defense (DoD)
advisory boards. In this blog posting, I’d like to talk a little bit
about my background and outline the priorities I’m pursuing at the SEI.
In subsequent blog postings, I’ll describe the SEI technical strategy in
more detail.
Read more...
Jun 10
2013
By Soumya Simanta
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Software Solutions Division
Warfighters
in a tactical environment face many constraints on computational
resources, such as the computing power, memory, bandwidth, and battery
power. They often have to make rapid decisions in hostile environments.
Many warfighters can access situational awareness data feeds on their
smartphones to make critical decisions. To access these feeds, however,
warfighters must contend with an overwhelming amount of information from
multiple, fragmented data sources that cannot be easily combined on a
small smartphone screen. The same resource constraints apply to
emergency responders involved in search-and-rescue missions, who often
must coordinate their efforts with multiple responders. This posting
describes our efforts to create the Edge Mission-Oriented Tactical App Generator (eMontage),
a software prototype that allows warfighters and first responders to
rapidly integrate geotagged situational awareness data from multiple
remote data sources.
Read more...
Jun 3
2013
By Peter Feiler
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Software Solutions Division
Aircraft
and other safety-critical systems increasingly rely on software to
provide their functionality. The exponential growth of software in
safety-critical systems has pushed the cost for building aircraft to the
limit of affordability. Given this increase, the current practice of
build-then-test is no longer feasible. This blog posting describes
recent work at the SEI to improve the quality of software-reliant
systems through an approach known as the Reliability Validation and Improvement Framework that will lead to early defect discovery and incremental end-to-end validation.
Read more...
May 27
2013
By William Anderson
Senior Researcher
Software Solutions Division
The
ubiquity of mobile devices provides new opportunities to warn people of
emergencies and imminent threats using location-aware technologies. The
Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system, formerly known as the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS), is the newest addition to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS),
which allows authorities to broadcast emergency alerts to cell phone
customers with WEA-enabled devices in an area affected by a disaster or a
major emergency. This blog posting describes how the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) work on
architecture, integration, network security, and project management is
assisting in implementing the WEA system, so it can handle a large
number of alert originators and provide an effective nationwide wireless
emergency warning system.
Read more...
May 20
2013
By Joseph Elm
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Building
a complex weapon system in today’s environment may involve many
subsystems—propulsion, hydraulics, power, controls, radar, structures,
navigation, computers, and communications. Design of these systems
requires the expertise of engineers in particular disciplines, including
mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering,
metallurgical engineering, and many others. But some activities of
system development are interdisciplinary, including requirements
development, trade studies, and architecture design, to name a few.
These tasks do not fit neatly into the traditional engineering
disciplines, and require the attention of engineering staff with broader
skills and backgrounds. This need for breadth and experience is often
met by systems engineers. Unfortunately, system engineering is often not
valued among all stakeholders in the Department of Defense (DoD), and
is often the first group of activities to be eliminated when a program
is faced with budget constraints. This blog post highlights recent research aimed at demonstrating the value of systems engineering to program managers in the DoD and elsewhere.
Read more...
May 13
2013
By Will Dormann
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
CERT
Occasionally this blog will highlight different posts from the SEI blogosphere. Today’s post by Will Dormann, a senior member of the technical staff in the SEI’s CERT Program, is from the CERT/CC (Coordination Center) blog. This post explores Dormann’s investigation into the state of signed Java applet security.
Read more...
May 6
2013
Second of a Two-Part Series
By Donald Firesmith
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Acquisition Support Program
In the first blog entry
of this two part series on common testing problems, I addressed the
fact that testing is less effective, less efficient, and more expensive
than it should be. This second posting of a two-part series
highlights results of an analysis that documents problems that commonly
occur during testing. Specifically, this series of posts identifies and
describes 77 testing problems organized into 14 categories; lists
potential symptoms by which each can be recognized; potential negative
consequences, and potential causes; and makes recommendations for
preventing them or mitigating their effects.
Read more...
Apr 29
2013
By Julien Delange
Senior Member of the Technical Staff
Research, Technology, & System Solutions
Software and systems architects face many challenges when designing life- and safety-critical systems,
such as the altitude and control systems of a satellite, the auto pilot
system of a car, or the injection system of a medical infusion pump.
Architects in software and systems answer to an expanding group of
stakeholders and often must balance the need to design a stable system
with time-to-market constraints. Moreover, no matter what programming
language architects choose, they cannot design a complete system without
an appropriate tool environment that targets user requirements. A
promising tool environment is the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL), which is a modeling notation that employs both textual and graphical representations. This post, the second in a series on AADL,
provides an overview of existing AADL tools and highlights the
experience of researchers and practitioners who are developing and
applying AADL tools to production projects.
Read more...
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