Elements of Software Science (Operating and programming systems series)
Elements of Software Science (Operating and programming systems series)
Structural models for software reliability prediction
ICSE '76 Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Software engineering
A reliability model for Markov structured software
Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software
How to write correct programs and know it
Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software
Models and Measurements for Quality Assessment of Software
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Determinants of program repair maintenance requirements
Communications of the ACM
Proceedings of the 1981 ACM workshop/symposium on Measurement and evaluation of software quality
ACM '81 Proceedings of the ACM '81 conference
Note: Pages 1 thru 501 will be found in volume 1. managing reliable software
ACM '78 Proceedings of the 1978 annual conference - Volume 2
Are current approaches sufficient for measuring software quality?
Proceedings of the software quality assurance workshop on Functional and performance issues
Software metrics: an introduction and annotated bibliography
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
Dependability metrics
Software quality assurance using software reliability growth modelling: state of the art
International Journal of Business Information Systems
The Littlewood-Verrall model for software reliability compared with some rivals
Journal of Systems and Software
A modified Markov model for the estimation of computer software performance
Operations Research Letters
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This paper examines critically, with a view to stimulating a discussion, some concepts which have been used in early work on software reliability measurement, and suggests improvements and areas of potentially fruitful future research. It is proposed that hardware-motivated measures such as mttf, mtbf should not be used for software without justification, and it is shown that such justification may be lacking under quite unexceptionable circumstances. Alternative methods of measuring software reliability are proposed. Emphasis is placed upon differentiating between two concepts of software reliability which are often blurred in the work of previous authors. These are, on the one hand, the reliability of the program-as-it-is (the number of bugs it contains), on the other, the reliability of the program-as-it-performs (failure rate, distribution of time to next failure, etc.). It is argued that the latter, here called operational reliability, is the one we should use. Measures of operational reliability which avoid use of mttf, etc., are proposed. A case is made for software engineers adopting a Bayesian stand-point:both in the interpretation of probability statements and in inference procedures. It is suggested that reliability modelling solely in terms of failures (or number of bugs) is unnecessarily naive. Interest really centres upon the consequences of failures as much as on their frequency. It is proposed that more effort be devoted to the development of models which incorporate a cost (or utility) structure. Finally, brief consideration is given to the question of program structure. The enormous success of hardware reliability theory, in combining component reliabilities with knowledge of system sturcture, must be emulated for software. Unfortunately, software structure does not easily lend itself to such an exercise. Some existing models are considered.