Dependability Concerns in Model-Driven Engineering

Model-Driven engineering (MDE) aims to elevate models in the engineering process to a central role in the specification, design, integration, validation, and operation of a system. MDE is becoming a widely used approach within the dependability domain: the system, together with its main dependability-related characteristics, is represented by engineering language models, while automatic transformations are used to generate the analysis models for the dependability analyses. This paper discusses the dependability concerns that should be captured by engineering languages for dependability analysis. It motivates and defines a conceptual model where the specific dependability aspects related to specific dependability analyses can be consistently and unambiguously merged, also detailing the part of the conceptual model supporting state-based dependability analysis methods. Then, it introduces a new intermediate dependability model that acts as a bridge between the high-level engineering language and the low-level dependability analysis formalism, and we discuss its features and its expressive power showing its application for the modelling of a simple but representative case-study.