DO-178 is a worldwide avionics software standard to which all airborne software is required to comply. Commonly considered the worlds strictest software standard, DO178 has transcended its avionics roots, and is now influencing other domains such as Medical, Transportation and Telecommunications.

Verification to DO-178 objectives is a labor-intensive effort. An engineering team can spend between 1-4 hours verifying each line of code to demonstrate, to the FAA, CAA or JAA, compliance to Level A. Additional cost to the development team to achieve DO-178 compliance has been quoted as being 50-200%. To ease this effort, tools are often employed to assist in satisfying DO-178 objectives.

QA·C++ (and soon QA·C) comes with a DO-178 tool qualification package, produced in association with independent verification company Verocel, which include:

• Tool Qualification Plan (TQP)
• Tool Operational Requirements (TOR)
• Tool Qualification Data (TQD)
• User Manual and Users Guide
• User Activated Certification Report

The PRQA Qualification Pack target the following DO-178 objectives:

• A-5 (4) Source Code conforms to standards
  DO-178B Paragraph 6.3.4d, Solutions provide a wide range of language checks to support verification that the source code conforms to a specific source code standard.

• A-5 (6) Source Code is accurate and consistent
  DO-178B paragraph 6.3.4f, Solutions are used to perform a number of checks that support source code consistency verification, e.g. to detect uninitialized or unused variables.

With the complexity of modern avionic software systems, the use of certified automated tools is essential to ensure on-time, and on-budget delivery of these projects. Using PRQA's advanced analysis solutions to eradicate fragile code and prove software quality adheres to the key areas of the D0178 software verification guidance, projects can take DO-178 credit and reduce the cost and effort in certifying application code.

Contact us for more information on how your organization can effectively gain DO-178 certification credit.