SBSE ’ 03 Service - Based Software Engineering Proceedings of the FM 2003 Workshop

The increasing complexity of automotive electronics systems has led to the evolution of distributed multi-network systems within a vehicle. The features supported by these systems are increasingly dependent on the interactions of distinct components designed by different suppliers. The traditional topdown systems engineering approach to vehicle electronics software integrates application software into individual components directly on top of the low layer hardware support code. Because of the increasing level of interaction between different components, this approach is no longer adequate. As a result automakers are moving towards defining a middle layer of software that is organized in terms of services. Defining the semantics of the services in this layer is one of the major challenges that must be resolved to carry this approach through.