CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending May 8, 1998

CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending May 8, 1998

[CFCSEIC]

CONTENTS:
A FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING COTS SOFTWARE
DOD SETS UP INFORMATION CLEARINGHOUSE ON COTS RELIABILITY
SPAWAR REQUIRES LEVEL 7 DII COE COMPLIANCE

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A FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING COTS SOFTWARE

Topic:  Software Engineering

A feature in the Software Engineering Institute's new publication, news@sei, 
discusses the SEI COTS-Based Systems (CBS) Initiative, which is currently 
developing a COTS software evaluation framework to help program managers, 
chief designers, architects, and lead engineers select the appropriate COTS 
technologies and products for use in mission-critical systems.  In the past, 
a variety of evaluation techniques have been used to develop a "best practice" 
evaluation, but no comprehensive work has been done to catalogue these 
techniques, or to describe and relate them so that an appropriate evaluation 
technique can be selected and applied in a specific setting.  Working 
with Lockheed Martin, a team from the CBS Initiative began to catalogue 
"best evaluation" and "best industry" practices for the Department of 
Defense (DoD).  Based on these studies, the CBS team has constructed a 
preliminary evaluation framework and has created a tutorial, which was 
presented at the International Conference on Software Engineering held 
in Japan in April.  A more detailed treatment of the framework can be 
found at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/97.reports
/97sr019/97sr019chap03.htm. For further information about the CBS Initiative, 
contact Ray Obenza, (412) 268-6312, or obenza@sei.cmu.edu.  Additional 
information is also available on the WWW at 
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/technology/dynamic_systems/cbs/.

Source:  Eileen Forrester, news@sei, "A Framework for Evaluating COTS 
Software, Spring 1998, v1, n1, p6

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DOD SETS UP INFORMATION CLEARINGHOUSE ON COTS RELIABILITY

Topic:  Software Engineering

An article in the April issue of Military & Aerospace Electronics 
discusses the creation of a new clearinghouse for reliability test 
information on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and equipment.  
The clearinghouse has been established by officials at the Department of 
Defense (DoD) and will be supported by a consortium of commercial, U.S. 
government, and foreign organizations.  The consortium is headquartered 
at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate in 
Rome, NY, and is called The Reliability Analysis Center Data Sharing 
Consortium.  It will accumulate and disseminate testing information to 
ensure that COTS parts in various applications and environments are robust 
enough to operate reliably in military and aerospace systems.  The 
consortium was established to share screening, qualification, field data, 
failure analysis, and obsolescence information for COTS components, 
equipment, and assemblies.  It has four categories of members: full 
members, contributing members, non-contributing members, and associate 
members (all U.S. government agencies).  For more information on the 
consortium, contact David Dylis, (315) 339-7055, fax: (315) 336-1371, or 
ddylis@rome.iitri.com.  The consortium disseminates database information over 
the WWW at http://rome.iitri.com/consortium.

Source:  John Keller, "DoD sets up information clearinghouse on COTS 
reliability", Military & Aerospace Electronics, Apr. 1998, v9, n4, p7  
http://www.pennwell.com

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SPAWAR REQUIRES LEVEL 7 DII COE COMPLIANCE

Topic:  DII COE

According to an article in the May 4th issue of Government Computer News, 
Rear Adm. John Gauss, commander of the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare 
Systems Command (SPAWAR), stated last month that software for his command 
will have to meet Level 7 of the DII COE's specifications. According to 
Gauss, anything below Level 7 is not an integrated system.  There are 
eight levels of compliance that are currently specified, and Level 7 
provides interoperability using COE services to integrate data.  The 
DoD's Joint Technical Architecture Version 1.0 requires Level 5 
compliance for product certification, but SPAWAR is taking its systems 
higher.  "Because requirements only go to Level 5, applications appear 
integrated to the user.  But interoperability is not guaranteed and 
functionality is duplicated because systems are maintained as 
stovepipes," says Gauss.  He feels that Level 7 promises a more 
economical approach because it uses standard application programming 
interfaces to integrate data and prevents legacy applications from 
duplicating functions.  At Level 7, the COE specifications also demand 
low-level tools for data exchange and an architecture for managing data 
flow across systems. 

Source:  Gregory Slabodkin, "At one Navy command, apps must really be 
integrated under COE", Government Computer News, May 4, 1998, v17, n12, 
p59  http://gcn.com

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