Title: A standards-based framework of software configuration derived from system requirements

Authors: Ahmad Al-Khasawneh; Khalid T. Al-Sarayreh; Kenza Meridji

Addresses: Department of Computer Information System and Software Engineering, Hashemite University, Zarqa, 13115, Jordan ' Department of Computer Information System and Software Engineering, Hashemite University, Zarqa, 13115, Jordan ' Department of Computer Information System and Software Engineering, Petra University, Amman, 11196, Jordan

Abstract: The European ECSS series of standards for the aerospace industry includes system configuration requirements as one of sixteen types of Non-Functional Requirement (NFR) for embedded and real time software. A number of concepts are provided in the ECSS, ISO standards to describe the various types of candidate configuration requirements at the system, software and hardware levels. This paper organises these dispersed configuration concepts into a standards-based framework of system configuration requirements allocated to software. The availability of this framework at the functional and service levels can facilitate the early identification, specification and measurement of the system configuration-NFR and their detailed allocation as specific configuration functions to be handled by the specified allocation to hardware or software or in a specific combination of both. In the absence of such standards-based framework and detailed model, such NFR requirements are typically handled in practice much later on in the software development life cycle when at system testing time, users and developers find out that a number of configuration requirements have been overlooked and additional work has to be expanded to implement them.

Keywords: software engineering; NFR; non-functional requirements; configuration requirements; FUR; software functional user requirements; ECSS standards; ISO standards; international standards; software configuration; aerospace industry; system configuration; system requirements.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2013.055563

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2013 Vol.48 No.1, pp.14 - 26

Published online: 31 Jul 2013 *

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