Robust Design of a Collaborative Platform for Model-Based System Engineering: Experience from an Industrial Deployment

Abstract

Model-Based System Engineering is gaining momentum in the industry. In order to be successful, it requires adequate tooling support. In addition to functional requirements related to model edition, verification and transformation, key non-functional requirements need to be carefully addressed such as versioning, usability/team work, reliability, security, ease of integration. In this paper, we first give an overview of how we dealt with such requirements in the context of the development of a real world platform for a global telecom operator, with a focus on early steps of system modelling. We then present a more detailed design of the tooling architecture and a high availability protocol for accessing a mainstream model repository. The proposed protocol is modelled and verified using the Alloy language and model-checker.