Comprehensive Modeling of Computer Control Systems' Functionality and Fault-Tolerance in UML

A fault-tolerance framework to be used in the process of designing and developing computerised control systems is presented, which is based on well-proven fault-tolerance techniques and FT-CORBA. Extensions of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) are employed to describe this framework,the mechanism contained, and system architectures making use of it. Use of the framework enables reasoning about system dependability already at an early stage of system development, and to customise fault-tolerance strategies according to application characteristies. Together with UML,the here specified extensions constitute an effective environment to design dependable computer control systems in a comprehensive way taking fault-tolerance into account throughout the entire development process.