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From: WhiteR@nospamplease.CRPL.Cedar-Rapids.lib.IA.US (Robert S. White)
Subject: Re: The stupidity of all the Ariane 5 analysts.
Date: 1997/08/19
Message-ID: <5tatlq$khi$1@flood.weeg.uiowa.edu>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 265150656
References: <5ta2e6$itn$1@enterprise.desy.de>
Organization: an avionics manufacturer
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-08-19T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <5ta2e6$itn$1@enterprise.desy.de>, joerg@hera-b.desy.de says...
>
>but, a minimum requirement for any software is to test it under
>sufficiently realistic conditions, isn't it ?   if the responsible
>software engineers would have fed _simulated_ data containing some
>information about the trajectory into their programs, they could
>(would) have found the  bug, d'accord ?

  That has been _exactly_ one of my positions as an INS (IRS) 
practitioner!  Who exactly are you addressing your comments to?  BM, 
JY, or DH?  The other problem, as pointed out, has been that there 
was software re-use without a correct analysis of its suitability 
by problem domain experts.  A system requirements review with the 
involvement of the right problem domain experts _could_ have 
determined by analysis whether the Ariane 4 IRS software should 
have been reused as is.  The failsafe for this review _should_ have
been proper simulation testing as you describe.
_____________________________________________________________________
Robert S. White         -- An embedded systems software engineer