1. Tool Interoperability and Data Translation Mechanisms using XML/XSL Tom Sabanosh 4-23-01

2. The Problem There are many successful software tools for risk management with uniquely valuable functions Difficult to make such tools work together as they each use their own representation for the same sorts of models.

3. The Solution! Improve the interoperability of software tools by developing a standardized model interchange language!

4. The Specific Problem Galileo, a tool for fault tree analysis, is essentially a stand-alone application. There is no standardized model interchange language for representing dynamic fault trees.

5. The Specific Solution! We developed a novel XML-based encoding for a dynamic fault tree language based on precise mathematical semantics We demonstrate how with the assistance of XSL, the XML can be translated to the data representation of a select number of tools for viewing fault trees.

6. On Fault Tree Analysis Fault Trees consists of the following –Basic Events, which model the probability of certain failures occurring in a system –Gates, either Boolean or dynamic, which combine the events in some logical manner If a subset of events fail, this could lead to system failure. For Galileo, a back-end solver calculates this probability.

7. Galileo

8. On XML (why XML) XML is ideal as a model interchange language XML is simplistic –Consists of a sequence of user-defined tags –Element tags must match and nest properly XML/XSL parsers exist Valid XML can be defined by a DTD

9. Developing a document type definition (DTD)for Galileo XML

10. XML to Match Pc1a Ms1 P1 P2

11. On XSL XSL documents are style sheets that can be used to modify an existing XML document Can be used to generate other XML, HTML, or any.txt file Primarily used for style, we use it for translation.

12. The Three Transformations

13. Transformation #1: XML -> Galileo Reverse translation is a good thing Galileo can generate the XML representation, and we can go from our intermediate representation back to our original fault tree representation. The idea here is, if we can do it, other tools can do it. We will see…

14. Transformation #2: XML -> HTML XML can be transformed into a pretty tabular web- format for reading and printing if necessary.

15. Transformation #3: XML -> Graph Layout Tool

16. What to walk away with Tool interoperability is a good thing XML is an ideal model interchange langauge XSL is sufficient for the translation purposes, but XML-QL could probably do more