Careful what you wish for - Risk mitigation for unplanned behaviors in distributed diagnostic software systems

There are several efforts underway to standardize interfaces between software components responsible for various elements of system test and diagnosis. Frameworks currently being defined by the DoD ARI and ATML Consortium seek to define data exchange interfaces across application boundaries with the goals of creating distributed information systems that will realize efficiencies of scale through the reuse of information. This paper makes the case that engineering common sense be applied to minimize the risk associated with ad hoc distributed system design to acceptable levels and realize the expected benefits. This demands that one must gain a sufficient level of understanding of the archetypical information elements within each of the distributed components, the relation of these elements across distributed components, and the transformations that occur as information flows between distributed system components. This understanding can be provided by treating the development of the proposed distributed system as an analytical engineering exercise to understand and model fundamental system component relationships and interactions.