TERSE: A tool for evaluating software reliability models

Currently more than forty models for estimating reliability exist. Thus, a practitioner is faced with the problem of selecting one out of many models to predict the behavior of given software. In such a situation, a method or tool to compare the reliability estimates from different models can certainly provide confidence in the selection of models and the estimates given by the selected model. To benchmark existing or new models, we present a new tool (TERSE) which can produce sets of failure data for a given program and compare the estimates produced by existing models. It can also generate random flow graphs for use by a given model. This feature offers a rich source of data for investigating effects of varying model parameters on reliability estimates and allows users to evaluate new models.