Format Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the core concepts of the mission profile format as well as a short top-down introduction its structure.

Objectives

The following primary objectives were considered during the MPFO development:

  • Well-structured, non-ambiguous, clutter-free and predictable format definition
  • Consideration of individual components as well as a set or class of components
  • Precise description of mathematical and physical relations
  • Parser infrastructure and parsing language independent format definition
  • Comprehensive static validation capability of XML instances (e.g., XML Schema, Relax-NG, Schematron)
  • Format offers flexibility to pre-define content via so-called templates
  • Well-documented (XML Schema, general documentation and application examples)
  • Usage of existing standards whenever possible (e.g., xmlenc, xmlsig, Strict Content MathML, PMML, ReqIF etc.)
  • High requirements on quality assurance tests

Secondary objectives:

  • Meta-model capable (i.e., strong alignment with SysML, UML2, MOF etc.)
  • Future support/consideration for/of document application in design flow (e.g., document traceability, bi-directionality)
  • Future support/consideration for/of document application in system context (e.g., sub-components)

Concepts and Structure

The mission profile information that is related with components is stored and organized in a document structure. The motivation behind this structure is to keep all related data in one place to allow a strict document revision control to allow traceability. Traceability is important for many application fields (such as within the automotive industry) to ensure functional safety requirements [ISO-26262].