Helping SMEs validate software quality Running time-sensitive systems, like telecommunications or industrial processes, calls for high-quality, reliable software. An EU-funded project has developed an affordable quality validation methodology and toolset enabling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to meet the necessary standards. Digital Economy © PhotoDisc Specification and Description Language (SDL) is widely used in the telecommunications field for functionality description and for the generation of software codes. The language is now being increasingly used in other real-time applications such as medical devices or aircraft and other transport systems. The SDL-SAFE project developed a methodology for the automatic quality assessment of software using SDL. This methodology is structured in several steps. Firstly, the style objectives, or the desired character of the overall implementation, are defined. These are then further developed into specific SDL rules, giving strict guidance on how a high-quality system can be defined in the language. A quality assessment model is then constructed based on quality validation criteria and complemented by the extraction of quality metrics. Finally, the rules, model and metrics are used to define an automatic quality assessment process for the software system under development. SDL-SAFE has also developed a set of software tools, including a syntax and structure analyser as well as a semantic analyser to check the SDL system is complete and self-consistent. The quality assessment process then includes establishing quality rules and grouping them according to the critical elements of the system. This is helpful to SMEs since it allows groups of rules to be matched with software quality criteria, instead of having to do the matching individually for each rule. The technology and methodology developed by the project reduce design, testing and implementation costs, improve accuracy of testing and produce reliable designs for efficient systems. They are of particular value to the growing number of European SME software developers lacking the resources for quality assessment and validation.
