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Re: [xsl] Is there an XSLT/XPath processor good enough to use in life-critical applications?

2019-11-15 16:03:27
Or the publishing of aircraft flight manuals--the 737 Max debacle shows the 
importance of documentation in preventing accidents--in the Boeing case the 
needed documentation was intentionally omitted but it could just have easily 
been omitted as the result of a publishing error that wasn't caught during the 
Q/A process. Even something as simple as in incorrectly fetched value in a data 
table could have dire consequences.

In my very early days as a writer at IBM I accidently omitted scores of 
messages from the messages manual I produced due to a typo in a conditional 
inclusion statement. Nobody in the review chain noticed until the paper manuals 
came back from the printers.

Fortunately the device being documented was highly reliable and we later 
determined that basically nobody ever looked at the messages manual, because 
the device never failed. But it could have been very serious now that I think 
about it.

Later I worked on the EMOD aircraft manual authoring and publishing system for 
McDonell Douglas (later Boeing) and it became clear very early just how serious 
that information was. Certainly everyone on the project took the safety 
implications very seriously.

Cheers,

E.

--
Eliot Kimber
http://contrext.com
 

On 11/15/19, 3:22 PM, "Michael Kay mike(_at_)saxonica(_dot_)com" 
<xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:

    
    
    
    Are you using XSLT/XPath in a life-critical application such as controlling 
a nuclear power plant or controlling an aircraft flight system? 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Another observation on this: those are the classic examples of 
safety-critical systems that everyone uses. But boring administrative systems, 
like one that sends letters to patients telling them when their next cervical 
smear test is due, are also safety-critical. Probably more deaths are caused by 
failures in that kind of system than by failures in systems where the 
consequences of failure are more immediate.
    
    WHO report 2016: "A study of reported errors from five family practices in 
a high-income
    country found that most reports contained administrative errors and more 
than
    three-quarters had the potential of serious harm".
    
    So let's change the question: Are you using XSLT/XPath in a life-critical 
application such as sending appointment letters to hospital patients?
    
    Michael Kay
    Saxonica





                                 
    



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