Managing Software Obsolescence
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Yesterday, I attended the Component Obsolescence Group (COG) quarterly meeting, which was held at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. I was standing in for my colleague Alex Wilson, who wasn’t able to attend, and I gave his presentation ‘Managing Software Obsolescence through Standards.’
![AirSpace, Duxford AirSpace, Duxford](http://blogs.windriver.com/parkinson/images/2008/02/06/duxford_airspace.jpg)
The presentation was about how open standards and software abstraction
can provide isolation from underlying hardware architectures, and can
assist processor architecture migration as part of a technology refresh
cycle. This is important in many A&D programmes, given in the
increasing in-service lifetimes of some systems, but the principle also
applies to other vertical markets too. The presentation also
highlighted how the RTCA/DO-297 standard provides guidance on the
development of Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) platforms to enable
modular and incremental certification of safety-critical systems, but
this actually provides a side-benefit which can help address
obsolescence. This is because it advocates a role-based approach, and
advocates separation of the configuration data based on role and activities.