How can you tell if the tool you are using has been qualified? Tune in to our third bonus question episode with Dr. Oscar Slotosch to find out how this complicated question can have a simple answer.

To find out more about the reliability of your tools, join us in Question 04: Do famous tools need to be qualified? and Question 07: What is a growing QKit?, or listen to our first full-length episode, Episode 01: Why Tool Qualification?, for an introduction to the benefits of qualification.

Your producer and friendly representative of the audience in this episode has been Ivana Kurecic.

We can be reached through [email protected] and all information about Validas can be found on our website, validas.de.

In this week’s episode, Dr. Oscar Slotosch explores the importance of the Tool Safety Manual — an essential part of qualification documentation and the only resource the end user has to help them use a tool safely. Learn how tool safety manuals are created and how you can use them responsibly, but also what it is that makes a tool safety manual good. At the end of this episode, Oscar announces a special project: Validas’s online database of good tool qualification kits.

To learn more about the documents used with a well-qualified tool, listen to our Episode 14: Qualification Documents, and if you would like to hear about the real-world effects of tool safety oversights, join us in Episode 39: Excel and COVID-19 Tool Safety.

Your producer and friendly representative of the audience in this episode has been Ivana Kurecic.

We can be reached through [email protected] and all information about Validas can be found on our website, validas.de.

Even though non-deterministic compilers may not be ideal for use in a safety-relevant project, they can still be qualified. Our new question episode goes beyond the usual topics of compiler qualification and answers the question of whether — and how — non-deterministic compilers can be qualified.

For a detailed discussion on compiler qualification, join us in Episode 27: Compiler Qualification, or listen to our interview episode in which Dr. Oscar Slotosch and Marcel Beemster of Solid Sands discuss compiler testing strategies: Episode 20: SuperTest with Marcel Beemster (Solid Sands).

Your producer and friendly representative of the audience in this episode has been Ivana Kurecic.

We can be reached through [email protected] and all information about Validas can be found on our website, validas.de.

It isn’t as easy to qualify a compiler as it is to qualify a simpler tool — their language interpretation and optimization procedures can wreak havoc on a well-qualified project. And some programming languages make this job harder than others. In this episode Oscar talks about the role of compilers in a safety-relevant project, their classification and best-practice qualification procedures, as well as those that are common practice in software development.

Did ISO 26262 abolish tool qualification in its second edition? In our first bonus episode, Dr. Oscar Slotosch explains why the answer is quite to the contrary — the second edition of ISO 26262 has put an even stronger emphasis on tool qualification.

To learn more about ISO 26262 and other safety standards, listen to our full-length episodes, Episode 33: ISO 26262, Episode 36: Safety Element out of Context — SEooC, and Episode 06: Safety Standards.

Your producer and friendly representative of the audience in this episode has been Ivana Kurecic.

We can be reached through [email protected] and all information about Validas can be found on our website, validas.de.

Unlike tools, libraries are elements in software development that get directly used in a finished product — therefore, their reliability and safety is paramount. In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch introduces you to the topic of library qualification and explains what makes it so crucial. Join us to learn how to safely use publicly available libraries, how Validas qualifies libraries, which special properties must be checked in library qualification, and much more.

To go back to the basics and learn more about what makes libraries special in terms of qualification, listen to Episode 02: Definitions, and to learn more about our approach to the qualification of software and safety elements out of context, join us in Episode 41: Validas’s Generic Safety Plan.

Your producer and friendly representative of the audience in this episode has been Ivana Kurecic.

We can be reached through [email protected] and all information about Validas can be found on our website, validas.de.

What is a good qualification and how can you recognize it? In this episode Dr. Oscar Slotosch shares his experience and insights on what makes a QKit good — and what makes it bad. Does it save you time and money, or does it sow doubt in your users? Join us and learn how to recognize the crucial elements of a good, reliable qualification.

To learn how effective qualification can make your safety-relevant project better and less expensive, listen to our Episode 21: How to Save Money by Tool Qualification, and to learn more about qualification kits, check out Episode 25: Qualification Kit — QKit.

Your producer and friendly representative of the audience in this episode has been Ivana Kurecic.

We can be reached through [email protected] and all information about Validas can be found on our website, validas.de.

Creating and maintaining a reliable set of qualification documents is one of the most important tasks of a tool provider or user. In this episode we delve into the topic of documentation, list the mandatory and recommended documents that should be included in every qualification, and discuss how different types of qualification require different approaches in documentation. Oscar also includes a few stories and talks about Validas’s perspective on why good documentation matters.

A highlight of Validas’s qualification framework is QKit, the qualification kit that makes your safety-relevant project easy to manage and generates its documentation automatically. Learn more about what you can do using QKit in Episode 15: What Is a Good QKit? and Episode 25: Qualification Kit — QKit. For more details about a crucial part of qualification documentation, listen to Episode 18: Tool Safety Manual.

Your producer and friendly representative of the audience in this episode has been Ivana Kurecic.

We can be reached through [email protected] and all information about Validas can be found on our website, validas.de.

This episode features an interview with Claudio Gregorio, a functional safety expert working at TÜV SÜD — a leading independent technical service provider. To understand Claudio’s role and duties in the assessment and certification of software components, Dr. Oscar Slotosch puts himself in the shoes of a tool provider and finds out the answers to all his burning questions on certificates, safety manuals, and the relationship between certification authorities and software tool providers.

To learn more about the functional safety services of TÜV SÜD, visit their website or send an inquiry to [email protected].

Your producer and friendly representative of the audience in this episode has been Ivana Kurecic.

We can be reached through [email protected] and all information about Validas can be found on our website, validas.de.

This week’s episode is an introduction to qualification test strategies — join Dr. Oscar Slotosch to learn about qualification testing and how it differs from quality testing, how a test strategy is designed, and what principles should be followed when deciding how many test cases to run. In this episode we will also help you determine the exact number of test cases required for an efficient qualification test.

Learn about the basics of qualification testing in Episode 04: Qualification Processes and Episode 26: Code Coverage in Qualification, immerse yourself into a detailed discussion of test strategies for compiler qualification in our Episode 27: Compiler Qualification, or learn about Validas’s own test case generator in Episode 28: ForeC++ — Test Case Generator.

Your producer and friendly representative of the audience in this episode has been Ivana Kurecic.

We can be reached through [email protected] and all information about Validas can be found on our website, validas.de.