Tools for the Standardised Software Safety Assessment. (The SOSAT Project)

Abstract The possibility of using tools for assistance in software safety assessment is of importance for all safety related applications of computers, particularly in the nuclear field. A set of such tools has therefore been developed within the framework of the SOSAT (Software SAfety Tools) project. The analysis starts on the basis of a memory dump of the processor, by extracting the program and translating it into a common assembly language (CAL). Translators from a variety of processors into CAL have been developed. CAL forms the basis for an analysis by a static analyser, and is also made executable and instrumented for dynamic testing. Applications of the tools on test examples show that the use of these tools leads to a deeper and more cost effective analysis of safety related programs. The SOSAT project is a joint project between TuV Norddeutschland in Hamburg, GRS in Garching, and the OECD Halden Reactor Project in Norway. It has been sponsored by Bundesministerium fur Forschung und Technologie in Germany.