SHARPE: a modeler's toolkit

SHARPE (Symbolic Hierarchical Automated Reliability and Performance Evaluator) is a program that supports the specification and automated solution of reliability and performance models. It contains support for fault trees, reliability block diagrams, reliability graphs, Markov and semi-Markov chains, generalized stochastic Petri nets, product-form queueing networks, and acyclic task graphs. These model types can be used separately or in hierarchical combination. SHARPE allows users complete freedom to choose model types, use results from models of any type as parameters for other models of any type and choose from among alternate algorithms for model solution. We present an example of how SHARPE can be used to analyze a hierarchical performability model.