An experimental evaluation of the assumption of independence in multiversion programming
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Improving software quality: the use of formal inspections at the JPL
ICSE '90 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Software engineering
Science and Substance: A Challenge to Software Engineers
IEEE Software
Safeware: system safety and computers
Safeware: system safety and computers
Software testing in the real world: improving the process
Software testing in the real world: improving the process
A Discipline for Software Engineering
A Discipline for Software Engineering
Software Engineering Economics
Software Engineering Economics
Structured Walkthroughs
Art of Software Testing
N-Version Design Versus One Good Version
IEEE Software
Improving Software Robustness with Dependability Cases
FTCS '98 Proceedings of the The Twenty-Eighth Annual International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing
Semiology of graphics
Automatic Detection and Masking of Nonatomic Exception Handling
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Reflections on Industry Trends and Experimental Research in Dependability
IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
A Systematic Review of Theory Use in Software Engineering Experiments
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Designing a prosthetic memory to support software developers
Companion of the 30th international conference on Software engineering
Exception handlers for healing component-based systems
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) - Testing, debugging, and error handling, formal methods, lifecycle concerns, evolution and maintenance
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Programs fail mainly for two reasons: logic errors in the code and exception failures. Exception failures can account for up to two-thirds of system crashes [1], hence, are worthy of serious attention. Traditional approaches to reducing exception failures, such as code reviews, walkthroughs, and formal testing, while very useful, are limited in their ability to address a core problem: The programmer's inadequate coverage of exceptional conditions. The problem of coverage might be rooted in cognitive factors that impede the mental generation (or recollection) of exception cases that would pertain in a particular situation, resulting in insufficient software robustness. This paper describes controlled experiments for testing the hypothesis that robustness for exception failures can be improved through the use of various coverage-enhancing techniques: N-version programming, group collaboration, and dependability cases. N-version programming and collaboration are well known. Dependability cases, derived from safety cases, comprise a new methodology based on structured taxonomies and memory aids for helping software designers think about and improve exception handling coverage. All three methods showed improvements over control conditions in increasing robustness to exception failures but dependability cases proved most efficacious in terms of balancing cost and effectiveness. A controlled experiment conducted with 119 subjects revealed a statistically significant 34 percent increase (p