Validas — Tool and Library Qualification

To make the process of building safe products more efficient and reliable, Validas has developed a generic safety plan for software and safety elements out of context (SEOOC), which has the added benefit of generating all the required ISO documents automatically from its model. In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch presents the generic safety plan and explains how it can be used to speed up the creat...

In the development of modern medical procedures and devices, and especially those that directly affect a person’s health, the safety of software tools needs to be paramount. In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch shares his insights into the topic of qualification for medical devices, including the current requirements and processes defined by safety standards and governmental agencies, as well as the...

To have high confidence in a qualified tool, we should be able to detect its potential errors with a high probability. This condition is commonplace within safety standards, but what does high probability mean in practice? In this short question episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch explains how high probability of error detection should — or shouldn’t — be measured and how we can achieve it in tool qualific...

Tool safety is not crucial just for the production of physical parts and mechanical devices, but it has also had an important role in the monitoring of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch responds to the recent news of the English government losing thousands of data entries by their unsafe use of Microsoft Excel, which may have caused irreversible damage to the...

As a key technique in any large-scale project, process modeling also has a role in qualification — but the right process modeling tool can provide you with more advantages than you would expect. Join Dr. Oscar Slotosch in this episode to learn about the process modeling technology (PMT) used by Validas, the design that went into its creation, and the features Validas experts use to simplify tool a...

MCDC is a ubiquitous technique used in software testing, but the tools that test it must also be appropriately qualified. In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch gives an overview of this code coverage criterion, explains its history and development, and shares his experiences with its advantages and disadvantages for tool qualification. You can find an in-depth description of MCDC in the article Oscar...

In this week’s episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch takes you on a deep dive into the Safety Element out of Context (SEooC) — a crucial construct that is defined in the ISO 26262 safety standard. Join us to learn why the SEooC is an important concept for qualification of tools and libraries, why its use can be a great advantage, and whether it should be the provider or the integrator to qualify it. Our prev...

In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch revisits the topic of tool confidence, clears misunderstandings, and explains the details of how tool confidence level (TCL) should be taken from the ISO 26262 safety standard into practice. For more information on TCL, listen to our discussions in Episode 07: Tool Confidence Level and Episode 19: Confidence , to learn about the crucial modeling tool used at Vali...

The process by which tools can have an impact on the safety of your project is not always straightforward or easy to understand. In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch devotes special attention to the ways in which tools can introduce or overlook errors and how we can determine their overall impact. Listen in for a summary of tool impact requirements and recommendations across different safety standar...

In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch brings you an introduction to ISO 26262, the crucial safety standard used in the automotive industry — and one of Oscar’s fields of expertise. Join us to understand the purpose and role of ISO 26262, but also to learn about the concepts of the Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL), the Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment (HARA), and the Safety Element out of C...

Do all tools need to be qualified, or can we simply trust the famous ones that have been used successfully in thousands of different environments? Tune in to our fourth short question episode to learn from Dr. Oscar Slotosch about why even famous tools need to be treated with care and where computer bugs really come from. For an introduction to qualification and its real-world importance, listen t...

Effective mitigation measures, which have been introduced in part 7.4.4.8 of the second edition of the IEC 61508 standard, are crucial to efficient safety planning — but to construct an effective mitigation strategy, we first need to understand its precise definition in relevant safety standards and what the use of mitigations means for its required workload. In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch sha...

This episode brings you a special discussion of C++ exceptions, in which Dr. Oscar Slotosch and Jakob Riedle of Validas joined forces with Dr. Philipp Robbel, Principal of Mapless AI, an up-and-coming company conducting research in applied artificial intelligence and autonomous system safety. Tune in to learn about the way C++ exceptions are handled in safety-critical projects, which requirements...

One of the most useful results of Validas’s research projects is PMT, the Process Modeling Tool used to fully model and manage safety-relevant processes at Validas. In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch talks about the development and implementation of some of its most useful features — from the ability to graphically depict a project’s safety plan, to its automated ticket generation. To freely acces...

In this week’s episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch discusses the details of safety compliance and its role in safety-relevant software projects. Join us to learn what safety standards require in terms of compliance, what is meant by safety integrity, why compliance reports should always be included your projects, and what procedure Validas uses to ensure compliance — efficiently and reliably. Join us in Ep...

To successfully test a tool or a library, especially in safety-relevant projects, it is crucial to test for all important cases; in some situations, this can become increasingly difficult to do without automation. In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch discusses the usage and purpose of test case generators with Jakob Riedle, who has spent the past two years developing ForeC++ — Validas’s own test cas...

After a crucial introduction to the role of code coverage in qualification, in our Episode 26 , Dr. Oscar Slotosch gives an in-depth analysis of the methods, procedures, and pitfalls in the qualification of compilers. Join us to learn which properties of compilers make them so difficult to qualify, why source code coverage doesn’t provide a sufficient argument for qualification, where it is likely...

In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch discusses the role of code coverage in the qualification of tools and libraries. Tune in to learn about how code coverage is applied in a safety analysis, the importance of the modified condition/decision coverage (MCDC) criterion in software testing, and why code coverage analysis is strongly recommended, but almost never required by modern safety standards. To...

Despite the restrictions imposed by the ongoing global pandemic, the work at Validas continues — even if it is from home — and this includes our podcast. In this episode we return to the basics to discuss qualification kits and, in particular, Validas’s own QKit. Join us to learn how the first instance of QKit was developed, which features of a qualification kit are useful for a customer, and how...

To expand on our last episode, in which we discussed tool chains, Dr. Oscar Slotosch talks to Robert Reitmeier — Validas’s own expert on tool chain modeling. In this episode Robert explains each step of the process of tool chain modeling for safety-relevant projects, shares tips on how to use Validas’s Tool Chain Analyzer to its full power, and reveals what new features his team is soon hoping to...

Tool chains are more than just sets of interconnected tools — in a safety analysis, they are often the crucial component, albeit not one that is trivial to manage. In this episode we discuss why we should be paying attention to tool chains when building a software project, how tool chains should be documented, and what requirements safety standards impose on their definition. In our next episode w...

If you have been listening to our podcast, you might have wondered about Validas — the types of projects we work on and the mission of Validas in the world of tool and library qualification. You’re in luck; the two CEOs of Validas, Dr. Oscar Slotosch and Dr. Peter Braun, have come together to discuss the successes and challenges of their company, the types of customers they work with, their favori...

In safety-relevant projects, you either need to mitigate for potential errors each time you interact with a tool or you need to qualify it — but can tool qualification save you money? In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch explains how to correctly evaluate whether all the cost and effort put toward mitigation can be lessened by a well thought out tool qualification, and how to find out if you could b...

In this episode, Dr. Oscar Slotosch sat down for a conversation with Marcel Beemster, the CTO of Solid Sands — the one-stop-shop for C and C++ compiler and library testing, validation, and safety services. They discuss all the things that can go wrong with a compiler, where the biggest challenges in compiler use come from, and how Marcel and his team use the Solid Sands’ SuperTest validation suite...

What is confidence in the safety of tools and libraries, and how do you buy or create it for your own products? Within safety standards, confidence is a clearly defined technical term, but it relies on subjective evaluation — so how can you be confident in the safety of the tools you use? In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch explains the importance of confidence for safety-critical projects and refl...