A Model-Based Design Methodology with Contracts to Enhance the Development Process of Safety-Critical Systems

In this paper a new methodology to support the development process of safety-critical systems with contracts is described. The meta-model of Heterogeneous Rich Component (HRC) is extended to a Common System Meta-Model (CSM) that benefits from the semantic foundation of HRC and provides analysis techniques such as compatibility checks or refinement analyses. The idea of viewpoints, perspectives, and abstraction levels is discussed in detail to point out how the CSM supports separation of concerns. An example is presented to detail the transition concepts between models. From the example we conclude that our approach proves valuable and supports the development process.