Software Certification for Temporal Properties with Affordable Tool Qualification

Abstract. It has been recognized that a framework based on proofcarrying code (also called semantic-based software certification in its community) could be used as a candidate software certification process for the avionics industry. To meet this goal, tools in the “trust base ” of a proof-carrying code system must be qualified by regulatory authorities. A family of semantic-based software certification approaches is described, each different in expressive power, level of automation and trust base. Of particular interest is the so-called abstraction-carrying code, which can certify temporal properties. When a pure abstraction-carrying code method is used in the context of industrial software certification, the fact that the trust base includes a model checker would incur a high qualification cost. This position paper proposes a hybrid of abstractionbased and proof-based certification methods so that the model checker used by a client can be significantly simplified, thereby leading to lower cost in tool qualification.