Virtual validation of software systems

• US 20080178144A1
• Filed: 01/09/2008
• Published: 07/24/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 01/10/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Virtual Purple LLC
• Original Assignee: Angela Bazigos, Christopher Hanson
• Inventors: Lumkin, Richard, Hanson, Christopher, Bazigos, Angela
• Granted Patent: US 8,266,578 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/101
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3604 Software analysis for verifying properties of programs byte-code verification G06F9/44589
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design

Abstract

A method for building and verifying and validating a software system that is used for regulated industry software related activities, such as FDA trials, field trials, biomedical data gathering, and similar efforts includes building the application into a virtual appliance using, for example, Vmware. The application and the supporting software are encapsulated in a single virtual file to create a virtual appliance that is independent of hardware and dependent only on virtual appliance support.

Claims

1. A method for constructing and validating a software system for a data intensive activity, including the steps of:

creating a user requirements specification for the software;

developing a project specific validation plan for the software based on the user requirements specification;

developing a functional specification based on the user requirements specification;

selecting software applications to carry out the functional specification and selecting virtual machine support software to run the selected software applications;

building the software system by combining said software applications and said virtual appliance support software to form a virtual appliance;

validating said software system by validating said virtual appliance.

2. The method for constructing and validating a software system of claim 1, wherein said software system is designed to operate under known operating system software, and said validating step includes verification of the virtual appliance under the known operating system software.

3. The method for constructing and validating a software system of claim 2, further including the step of entry of values for pre-populated lists through the use of automated software means.

4. The method for constructing and validating a software system of claim 3, wherein said automated software means includes importing values from a database management program.

5. The method for constructing and validating a software system of claim 2, further including the step of bypassing installation validation of the software system through the use of virtual appliance installation in the known operating system software.

6. The method for constructing and validating a software system of claim 2, further including the step of validating at least one component of the software system through inferred qualification based on previously developed data regarding said at least one software component when operated within the virtual appliance.

7. The method for constructing and validating a software system of claim 2, further including the step of operating the software system in a plurality of computer environments using the known operating system software.

8. The method for constructing and validating a software system of claim 2, wherein said virtual appliance is independent of hardware and dependent only on virtual appliance support for operating under the known operating system software.