Assurance Case Property Checking with MMINT-A and OCL

Assurance cases are a means to argue about the safety, security, etc. of software systems in critical domains. In previous work, we presented a tool called MMINT-A to automate change impact assessment of assurance cases given system design changes. In this paper, we argue that applying model-driven techniques to assurance case development allows safety engineers and assessors to ask questions about these artifacts and answer them using automated tool support – something not achievable with traditional document-based approaches. To support this argument, we present a library of well-formedness constraints on assurance cases structured in the Goal Structuring Notation (GSN). The constraints are formalized using OCL and implemented in MMINT-A. We also discuss other types of constraint checks that are useful in the automotive domain given the ISO 26262 standard and internal company processes.