Workflow principles applied to multi-solution analysis of dependable distributed systems

Real world dependable distributed systems are often heterogeneous, not only in their physical composition, but also from a modeling and analysis perspective. Indeed, different components may be modeled by using the most suitable modeling formalism and multisolution strategies may be applied to analyze the resulting multi-formalism model since no single solution method is adequate to solve all submodels. We present the architecture of an extensible multiformalism framework for the modeling and design of distributed dependable system. We show that the process needed to solve/analyze a model expressed through different formalisms may be described as it were a business process and executed by means of a workflow engine. We apply the proposed technique to a fault tolerant remote SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system.