Software Reliability as a Function of User Execution Patterns

Assessing the reliability of a software system has always been an elusive target. A program may work very well for a number of years and this same program may suddenly become quite unreliable if its mission is changed by the user. This has led to the conclusion that the failure of a software system is dependent only on what the software is currently doing. If a program is always executing a set of fault free modules, it will certainly execute indefinitely without any likelihood of failure. A program may execute a sequence of fault prone modules and still not fail. In this particular case, the faults may lie in a region of the code that is not likely to be expressed during the execution of that module. A failure event can only occur when the software system executes a module that contains faults. If an execution pattern that drives the program into a module that contains faults is never selected, then the program will never fail. Alternatively, a program may execute successfully a modu...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: HICSS
• Authors: John C. Munson, Sebastian G. Elbaum
• Keywords: Biometrics, Execution Patterns, Faults, HICSS 1999, Software