Bubbles: a data management approach to create an advanced industrial interoperability layer for critical systems development applying reuse techniques

Abstract: The development of critical systems is becoming more and more complex. The overall tendency is that development costs raise. In order to cut cost of development, companies are forced to build systems from proven components and larger new systems from smaller older ones. Respective reuse activities involve good number of people, tools and processes along different stages of the development lifecycle which involve large numbers of tools. Some development is directly planned for reuse. Planned reuse implies excellent knowledge management and firm governance of reusable items. According to the current state of the art, there are still practical problems in the two fields, mainly because the governance and knowledge management is fragmented over the tools of the toolchain. In our experience, the practical effect of this fragmentation is that involved ancestor and derivation relationships are often undocumented or not exploitable. Additionally, useful reuse is almost always dealing with heterogeneous content which must be transferred from older to newer development environments. In this process, interoperability proves either as biggest obstacle or greatest help. In this paper, authors connect the topics interoperability and knowledge management and propose to seek for ubiquitous reuse via advanced interoperability features. A single concept from a larger Technical Interoperability Concept (TIC) with the name bubble is presented. Bubbles are expected to overcome existing barriers to cost-efficient reuse in systems and software development lifecycles. That is why, the present paper introduces and defines bubbles by showing how they simplify application of repairs and changes and hence contribute to expansion of reuse at reduced cost.