Software quality assurance in metrology

Abstract This paper discusses the specific problem of software quality assurance in metrology. There are different levels of quality requirements of metrology and of softwre engineering methods. In the scope of software engineering there is a great variety of quality assurance techniques available. On one hand they reach from non-computer aided methods over the application of standards to the use of software tools. On the other hand the quality assurance ranges over the whole software life cycle with the focuses on constructive methods and on analytic methods. Additionally, management activities are becoming a more important role in software quality assurance. Because software is not included in the physically determined traceability chain other approaches seem as necessary. Possible ways are (1) special concepts for particular problems, (2) a taxonomy of methods supported by statistics and (3) metrology software libraries.