Architecture-Level Configuration of Large-Scale Embedded Software Systems

Configuration in the domain of integrated control systems
(ICS) is largely manual, laborious, and error-prone. In this paper, we
propose a model-based configuration approach that provides automation
support for reducing configuration effort and the likelihood of configuration
errors in the ICS domain. We ground our approach on componentbased
specifications of ICS families. We then develop a configuration
algorithm using constraint satisfaction techniques over finite domains to
generate products that are consistent with respect to their ICS family
specifications. We reason about the termination and consistency of our
configuration algorithm analytically. We evaluate the effectiveness of our
configuration approach by applying it to a real subsea oil production
system. Specifically, we have rebuilt a number of existing verified product
configurations of our industry partner. Our experience shows that
our approach can automatically infer up to 50% of the configuration
decisions, and reduces the complexity of making configuration decisions.