The safe and reliable operation of software within civil aviation systems and equipment has historically been assured through the application of rigorous design assurance applied during the software development process. Increasingly, manufacturers are seeking ways to use software that has been previously developed for other domains or that has been previously certified for use in lower criticality aviation applications. Product service history is one method for demonstrating that such software is acceptable for use in the new application domain. In theory, product service history would seem to be a fairly simple concept, both to understand and to apply. However, in practice, such use has proved extremely problematic, as questions of how to measure the historic performance and the relevance of the provided data have surfaced. This report represents the results of research in this area, for use by the Federal Aviation Administration in formulating new guidance and prioritizing future research work in the area of product service history.
The overall objective of this handbook is to provide a reference to aid the highway engineer, software developer, and project manager in software veri...
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United States Department of Transportation
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