Software architectures for dependable systems: a software engineering perspective

Although there is a large body of research in dependability, architectural level reasoning about dependability is only just emerging as an important theme in software development. This is due to the fact that dependability concerns are often left until too late in the process of development. In addition, the complexity of emerging applications and the trend of building trustworthy systems from existing untrustworthy components are urging dependability concerns to be considered at the architectural level. This tutorial will present the current challenges and promising solutions for structuring dependable systems at the architectural level. In addition of providing basic concepts related to dependability and software architectures, the rest of the tutorial is presented in the context of the dependability technologies. Throughout the tutorial, case studies will be used to exemplify the key concepts.