Compilation of constraint automata into fault trees

Description languages for reliability and dependability studies have to fulfil two contradictory requirements. On the one hand, one expects to be able to write high level, compositional descriptions of dynamic behaviors within these formalisms. On the other hand, the written models should be assessed efficiently. A way to achieve partly both requirements is to design algorithms that compile high level descriptions into low level mathematical models for which there exists efficient assessment techniques. In this paper, we report the problems raised by this compilation process in the case of AltaRica descriptions. Since any AltaRica description can be easily compiled into a constraint automaton, the high level language we actually start from consists of constraint automata. The low level mathematical model consists of Boolean equations (fault trees).