Stochastic Dependability Analysis of System Architecture Based on UML Models

The work in this paper(1) is devoted to the definition of a dependability modeling and model based evaluation approach based on UML models. It is to be used in the early phases of the system design to capture system dependability attributes like reliability and availability, thus providing guidelines for the choice among different architectural and design solutions. We show how structural UML diagrams can be processed to filter out the dependability related information and how a system-wide dependability model is constructed. Due to the modular construction, this model can be refined later as more detailed information becomes available. We discuss the model refinement based on the General Resource Model, an extension of UML. We show that the dependability model can be constructed automatically by using graph transformation techniques.