XML Schema Based Faultset Definition to Improve Faults Injection Tools Interoperability

This paper describes an XML schema formalization approach for the definition of basic fault sets which specify memory and/or register value corruption in microprocessor-based systems. SWIFI (Software Implemented Fault Injection) tools use fault injectors to carry out the fault injection campaign defined in a GUI-based application. However, the communication between the fault injector and the application is defined in an ad-hoc manner. Through this proposed XML Schema definition different injectors could be used to carry out the same fault set injection. To validate this approach floating point register and memory corruptions with temporal triggers and routine interception mechanisms to carry out argument and return value, corruption has been considered. Moreover, an experimental tool called Exhaustif®, consisting of a GUI Java application for defining the fault sets and injection policies and two injectors for SPARC and i386 architectures under RTEMS, has been developed. The XML-based approach improves the interoperability between SWIFI tools by uncoupling the injectors from the experiment manager in charge of the fault campaign.