Process for Database Specification and Verification in Airborne Systems

Developing safety-critical systems usually takes place in a regulated environment. Some examples include systems that control aircraft, nuclear reactors, and medical devices. Regulatory agencies require these products to meet stringent certification requirements, including embedded software and databases. An error in software development can cause loss of life or other catastrophic consequences. Therefore, safety-critical software requires a robust development process, verification, configuration management, and quality assurance. The correctness and completeness of such software need to be demonstrated with high assurance. Consequently, this concern extends to databases as well. Our work proposes to create a requirements specification and verification process for databases in safety-critical systems that satisfies various regulatory standards and ensures data completeness and correctness. The main contributions of this work are: (i) compatibility to regulatory needs in RTCA DO-178C and RTCA DO-200B; (ii) organized construction of databases guided by requirements; and (iii) mitigation of errors introduced in database construction from specification to integration with application software.