Software Engineering Institute

Mismatches between software components and between software and hardware often result in system problems that are caught late in the development lifecycle, during integration or operation. Late discovery of faults and vulnerabilities is expensive for developers and potentially dangerous for users of mission- and safety-critical technologies. To address this problem, SAE International released Aerospace Standard AS5506, the Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL). Using AADL to model complex systems can help engineers identify issues that could cause system failures when components interact. This brochure explains how AADL enables early analysis and describes other benefits of using it to support system verification and validation with model-based engineering.